anything of one who had dealt them
so many sharp thrusts. He was sensitive to a fault, and a slight word
would have driven him forever from Julia Markham, and turned him back
upon himself, as a dissolving and transforming fire. Mentally, he was
quick as a flash, with a strong grasp, and a power of ready analysis;
and so little did his mental achievements cost him, that his
acquirements were doubted. He already paid the penalty of a nervous
and brilliant intellect--that of being adjudged not profound. Men
are always being deceived as to the real value of things, by their
apparent cost.

We see this illustrated in the case of some grave and ponderous
weakling, who has nothing really in him, and yet who creaks, and
groans, and labors, and toils, to get under way, until our sympathy
with his painful effort leads us so to rejoice over his final delivery
that we have lost all power or disposition to weigh or estimate his
half-strangled, commonplace bantling, when it is finally born, and
we are rather inclined to wonder over it as a prodigy. No doubt the
generation of men who witnessed the mountain in labor, regarded
the sickly, hairy little mouse, finally brought forth, as a genuine
wonder.

Great is mediocrity! It is the average world, and the majority
conspires to do it reverence. Genius, if such a thing there is, may be
appreciated by school-boys; the average grown world count it as of no
value. If a man has a brilliant intellect, let him bewail it on the
mountains, as the daughter of Jephtha did her virginity. If he has
wit, let him become Brutus.

Readiness and genius are apt to be arrogant; and, when joined with a
lively temper, with an ardent, impetuous nature, they render a young
man an object of dread, dislike, or worse. Bart had grave doubts
of his being a genius, but it had been abundantly manifest to his
sensitive perceptions that he was disliked; and he had in part arrived
at the probable cause, and was now very persistently endeavoring to
correct it by holding his tongue and temper.

Like all young men bent upon a pursuit where his success must depend
upon intellect, he was most anxious to ascertain the quality and
extent of his brain-power--a matter of which a young man can form
no proper idea. Later in life a man is informed by the estimate of
others, and can judge somewhat by what he has done. The youth has
done nothing. He has made no manifestation by which an observer can
determine; when he looks at