“I trust, my dear sir, you do not think me ungrateful. I have not wilfully neglected you. More than once I set out to visit you; but my heart was so full--I was so very unhappy--that I had not the spirit for it. I felt that I should not be any company for you, and feared that I would only affect you with some of my own dullness.” “Nay, that should be no fear with you, my dear boy, for you should know that the very sorrows of youth, as they awaken the sympathies of age, provide it with the means of excitement. It is the misfortune of age that its interest is slow to kindle. Whatever excites the pulse, if not violently, is beneficial to the heart of the old man. But these sorrows of yours, my son--do you not call them by too strong a name? I suspect they are nothing more than the discontents, the vague yearnings of the young and ardent nature, such as prompt enterprise and lead to nobleness. If you had them not, you would think of little else than how to squat with your cousin there, seeking to entrap your dinner; nay, not so much--you would think only of the modes of cooking and the delight of eating the fish, and shrink from the toil of taking it. Do not deceive yourself. This sorrow which distresses you is possibly a beneficial sorrow. It is the hope which is in you to be something--to DO something--for this DOING is after all, and before all, the great object of living. The hope of the heart is always a discontent--most generally a wholesome discontent--sometimes a noble discontent leading to nobleness. It is to be satisfied rather than nursed. You must do what it requires.” “I know not what it requires.” “Your DOING then must be confined at present to finding out what that is.” “Alas! sir, it seems to me as if I could no more THINK than I can DO” “Very likely;--that is the case at present; and there are several reasons for this feebleness. The energies which have not yet been tasked, do not know well how to begin. You have been a favored boy. Your wants have been well provided for. Your parents have loved you only too much.” “Too much! Why, even now, I am met with cold looks and reproachful words, on account of this stranger, of whom nobody knows anything.” “Even so: suppose that to be the case, my son; still it does not alter the truth of what I say. You can not imagine that your parents prefer this stranger to yourself, unless you imagine them to have undergone a very sudden change of character. They have always treated you tenderly--too tenderly.” “Too tenderly, sir?” “Yes, William, too tenderly. Their tenderness has enfeebled you, and that is the reason you know not in what way to begin to dissipate your doubts, and apply your energies. If they reproach you, that is because they have some interest in you, and a right in you, which constitutes their interest. If they treat the stranger civilly, it is because he is a stranger.”