e curve of the sphere. Nor does it
matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or
Alexandrian stanza;--read it forward, backward, or across, it still
spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God
allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect
or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though
I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound
with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave
that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass
for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that
they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not
see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be
each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will
be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight
of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency
unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of
a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it
straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will
explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your
conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done
singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can
be firm enough to-day to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so
much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now.
Always scorn appearances and you always may. The force of character is
cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this.
What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which
so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and
victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He
is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws
thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and
America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no
ephemera. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it
is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage because it is not a
trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived,
and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a you