* * * * * [Sidenote: Appreciating individuality.] Who is appreciative and many-sided enough to guide the first efforts of genius just coming to consciousness? How many could profitably have advised Hawthorne when his peculiar Rembrandt style was forming? As a race, we Anglo-Saxons are so self-sphered that we lack the power to enter into the individuality of another mind, and give profitable advice for its direction. * * * * * [Sidenote: Truth told by an enemy.] The truth, bitterly told by an enemy with a vivid power of statement, is a tonic oftentimes too strong for one’s powers of endurance. WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS. [Sidenote: Immutability of Nature’s laws.] In some constitutions, with some hereditary predispositions, the indiscretions and ignorances of youth leave a fatal, irremediable injury. Though the sin be in the first place one of inexperience and ignorance, it is one that nature never forgives. The evil once done can never be undone; no prayers, no entreaties, no resolutions, can change the consequences of violated law. The brain and nerve force once vitiated by poisonous stimulants become thereafter subtle tempters and traitors, forever lying in wait to deceive, and urging to ruin; and he who is saved is saved so as by fire. * * * * * [Sidenote: Doing our _own_ work.] “There must be second fiddles in an orchestra, and it’s fortunate that I have precisely the talent for playing one, and my doctrine is that the second fiddle _well_ played is quite as good as the first. What would the first be without it?” * * * * * [Sidenote: Courage.] “Well, there’s no way to get through the world but to keep doing, and to attack every emergency with courage.” * * * * * [Sidenote: Value of truth.] “We’ve got to get truth as we can in this world, just as miners dig gold out of the mines, with all the quartz, and dirt, and dross; but it pays.” CHAPTER VI. NATURE. THE MINISTER’S WOOING. [Sidenote: Want of sympathy in nature.] The next day broke calm and fair. The robins sang remorselessly in the apple-tree, and were answered by bobolink, oriole, and a whole tribe of ignorant little bits of feathered happiness that danced among the leaves. Golden-glorious unclosed those purple eyelids of the east, and regally came up the sun; and the treacherous sea broke into a thousand smiles, laughing and dancing with every ripple, as unconsciously as if no form dear to human hearts had gone down beneath it. Oh, treacherous, deceiving beauty of outward things! beauty, wherein throbs not one answering nerve to human pain! * * * * * [Sidenote: The sea.]