Yes, my friend, utterly put down the natural tendency in your heart to be angry with the man who thinks poorly of you. For you have, in sober reason, no right to be angry with him. It is more pleasant, and indeed more profitable, to live among those who think highly of you--It makes you better. You actually grow into what you get credit for. Oh, how much better a clergyman preaches to his own congregation, who listen with kindly and sympathetic attention to all he says, and always think too well of him, than to a set of critical strangers, eager to find faults and to pick holes! And how heartily and pleasantly the essayist covers his pages which are to go into a magazine whose readers have come to know him well, and to bear with all his ways! If every one thought him a dull and stupid person, he could not write at all: indeed, he would bow to the general belief, and accept the truth that he is dull and stupid. But further, my reader, let us be reasonable, when it is pleasant; and let us sometimes be irrational, when _that_ is pleasant too. It is natural to have a very kindly feeling to those who think well of us. Now, though, in severe truth, we have no more reason for wishing to shake hands with the man who thinks well of us than for wishing to shake the man who thinks ill of us, yet let us yield heartily to the former pleasant impulse. It is not reasonable, but it is all right. You cannot help liking people who estimate you favorably and say a good word of you. No doubt we might slowly learn not to like them more than anybody else; but we need not take the trouble to learn _that_ lesson. Let us all, my readers, be glad if we can reach that cheerful position of mind at which my eloquent friend SHIRLEY and I have long since arrived: that we are extremely gratified when we find ourselves favorably reviewed, and not in the least angry when we find ourselves reviewed unfavorably; that we have a very kindly feeling towards such as think well of us, and no unkind feeling whatever to those who think ill of us. Thus, at the beginning of the month, we look with equal minds at the newspaper notices of our articles; we are soothed and exhilarated when we find ourselves described as sages, and we are amused and interested when we find ourselves shown up as little better than geese.