Yet so it is, the best of mankind, those, most veritably, "of whom the world was not worthy," have been, in their day, either the butt for the sneers of silliness, or the object of envy's relentless hate, or they have toiled and toiled, perhaps unto martyrdom, beneath the withering, blasting frown of pride and oppression. Ay, and let us be honest with ourselves, and confess, that though years or hard experience may have bettered our own natures,--for we are all too much like that kind of fruit which takes long days and many weathers to ripen it, so as to bring forth its most wholesome flavour,--let us be honest, I say, with ourselves, and confess, that we were as foolishly willing as others, in our youth, to laugh at what the varlet world calls oddness, and singularity, and eccentricity. Some of us, however, now see matters in a somewhat different light. We have discovered that there is some marrow of meaning in many of those old saws we once thought so tiresome and dry,--such as, "All is not gold that glitters," and, "Judge not a nut by the shell," and the like; and we say, within ourselves, when we are in a moralising mood, (as you and I are now, reader,) that, if we were young again, we would not join the world in laughing as we used to laugh with it, at certain queer folk who dwell in our memories,--for we begin to have a shrewd suspicion that they were among the true "diamonds in the rough" of human character. And, to be truly candid with ourselves, reader, have not you and I found out, by this time, that we are, to all intents and purposes, as "odd," and as "singular," and as "eccentric," as other folk? Is not the jewel of the truth this,--as pointless as the saying may look at first sight,--that--All men are singular? Hath not every man his likes and his dislikes, his whims and his caprices, his fancies and his hobbies, his faults and his failings? And are not these found so strangely interwoven in our daily thinkings, and sayings, and doings, that they may well make observers ponder upon them, if they had not enough of similar employment at home? Nay, if some one unnatural sort of thought, or impression, or habit, which each of us have, could be seen, at all times, by every body, in its true dimensions, would it not look as uncouth as one of those huge boulders of primary rock tumbled down from the mass, and left sticking out from some late-formed strata of marl, quite at a distance from its proper place, that the geologists talk of? Would not the thought, or impression, or habit, if our most attached friends could see it in its proper moral bulk, dwarf many of our "excellencies," as their partiality phrases it, and really render us poor deformed things, in their judgment?