wise.
To duly appreciate genius, you must have genius; a pigmy cannot measure
the strength of a giant. The faculty that reads and admires, is the
green undeveloped state of the faculty that writes and creates.

A book, a principle, an individual, a landscape, or any object in
nature, to be understood and appreciated, must answer to something
within us; appreciation is the first step toward interpreting a
revelation.

To feel terribly beaten is a good sign; the more resources a man is
conscious of, the deeper he will feel his defeat. But to feel unusually
elated at a victory indicates that our strength did not warrant it,
that we had gone beyond our resources. The boy who went crowing all day
through the streets, on having killed a squirrel with a stone, showed
plainly enough that it was not a general average of his throwing, and
that he was not in the habit of doing so well; while the rifleman picks
the hawk from the distant tree without remark or comment, and feels
vexed if he miss.

The style of some authors, like the manners of some men, is so naked,
so artificial, has so little character at the bottom of it, that it is
constantly intruding itself upon your notice, and seems to lie there
like a huge marble counter from behind which they vend only pins and
needles; whereas the true function of style is as a means and not as an
end--to concentrate the attention upon the thought which it bears, and
not upon itself--to be so apt, natural, and easy, and so in keeping with
the character of the author, that, like the comb in the hive, it shall
seem the result of that which it contains, and to exist for _its_ sake
alone.

It is interesting to note, in these and other extracts, how the young
writer is constantly tracing the analogy between the facts of everyday
life about him, and moral and intellectual truths. A little later he
began to knit these fragments together into essays, and to send the
essays to the "Saturday Press" under such titles as "Deep," and "A
Thought on Culture." There is a good deal of stating the same thing in
diverse ways. The writer seems to be led on and on to seek analogies
which, for the most part, are felicitous; occasionally crudities and
unnecessarily homely comparisons betray his unformed taste. The first
three paragraphs of "Deep" give a fair sample of the essay:--

Deep authors? Yes, reader, I like deep authors, that is, authors of
great penetration, reach, and compass of thought; bu