to, and which
will, at least, give them a chance of becoming President of the United
States by and by, if that is any object to them. What would you have
done with the young person who called on me a good many years ago, so
many that he has probably forgotten his literary effort,--and read as
specimens of his literary workmanship lines like those which I will favor
you with presently? He was an able-bodied, grown-up young person, whose
ingenuousness interested me; and I am sure if I thought he would ever be
pained to see his maiden effort in print, I would deny myself the
pleasure of submitting it to the reader. The following is an exact
transcript of the lines he showed me, and which I took down on the spot:

"Are you in the vein for cider?
Are you in the tune for pork?
Hist! for Betty's cleared the larder
And turned the pork to soap."

Do not judge too hastily this sincere effort of a maiden muse. Here was
a sense of rhythm, and an effort in the direction of rhyme; here was an
honest transcript of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain
idealizing expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, mysterious
instincts, impelling us even in the selection of our bodily sustenance.
But I had to tell him that it wanted dignity of incident and grace of
narrative, that there was no atmosphere to it, nothing of the light that
never was and so forth. I did not say this in these very words, but I
gave him to understand, without being too hard upon him, that he had
better not desert his honest toil in pursuit of the poet's bays. This,
it must be confessed, was a rather discouraging case. A young person
like this may pierce, as the Frenchmen say, by and by, but the chances
are all the other way.

I advise aimless young men to choose some profession without needless
delay, and so get into a good strong current of human affairs, and find
themselves bound up in interests with a compact body of their fellow-men.

I advise young women who write to me for counsel,--perhaps I do not
advise them at all, only sympathize a little with them, and listen to
what they have to say (eight closely written pages on the average, which
I always read from beginning to end, thinking of the widow's cruse and
myself in the character of Elijah) and--and--come now, I don't believe
Methuselah would tell you what he said in his letters to young ladies,
written when he was in his nine hundred and sixty-ninth year.