“Ay, sir, but what if they give this stranger authority to question and to counsel me? Is not this a cruel indignity?” “Softly, William, softly! There is something at the bottom of this which I do not see, and which perhaps you do not see. If your parents employ a stranger to counsel you, it proves that something in your conduct leads them to think that you need counsel.” “That may be, sir; but why not give it themselves? why employ a person of whom nobody knows anything?” “I infer from your tone, my son, rather than your words, that you have some dislike to this stranger. “No, sir--” was the beginning of the young man's reply, but he stopped short with a guilty consciousness. A warm blush overspread his cheek, and he remained silent. The old man, without seeming to perceive the momentary interruption, or the confusion which followed it, proceeded in his commentary. “There should be nothing, surely, to anger you in good counsel, spoken even by a stranger, my son; and even where the counsel be not good, if the motive be so, it requires our gratitude though it may not receive our adoption.” “I don't know, sir, but it seems to me very strange, and is very humiliating, that I should be required to submit to the instructions of one of whom we know nothing, and who is scarcely older than myself.” “It may be mortifying to your self-esteem, my son, but self-esteem, when too active, is compelled constantly to suffer this sort of mortification. It may be that one man shall not be older in actual years than another, yet be able to teach that other. Merely living, days and weeks and months, constitutes no right to wisdom: it is the crowding events and experience--the indefatigable industry--the living actively and well--that supply us with the materials for knowing and teaching. In comparison with millions of your own age, who have lived among men, and shared in their strifes and troubles, you would find yourself as feeble a child as ever yet needed the helping hand of counsel and guardianship; and this brings me back to what I said before. Your parents have treated you too tenderly. They have done everything for you. You have done nothing for yourself. They provide for your wants, hearken to your complaints, nurture you in sickness, with a diseasing fondness, and so render you incapable. Hence it is, that, in the toils of manhood, you do not know how to begin. You lack courage and perseverance.” “Courage and perseverance!” was the surprised exclamation of the youth. “Precisely, and lest I should offend you, my son, I must acknowledge to you beforehand, that this very deficiency was my own.” “Yours, sir? I can not think it. What! lack courage?” “Exactly so!” “Why, sir--did I not see you myself, when everybody else looked on with trembling and with terror, throw yourself in the way of Drummond's horses and save the poor boy from being dashed to pieces? There was surely no lack of courage there!”