eets with; how to do with few and easily gotten
things: but let him seize with enthusiasm the opportunity of
doing what he can, for the virtues are natural to each man
and the talents are little perfections.

Let him hope infinitely with a patience as large as the sky.

Nothing is so young and untaught as time.

How wise is his saying that we do not turn to the books of the
Bible--St. Paul and St. John--to start us on our task, as we do to
Marcus Aurelius, or the Lives of the philosophers, or to Plato, or
Plutarch, "because the Bible wears black clothes"! "It comes with a
certain official claim against which the mind revolts. The Bible has
its own nobilities--might well be charming if left simply on its
merits, as other books are, but this, 'You must,' 'It is your duty,'
in connection with it, repels. 'T is like the introduction of martial
law into Concord. If you should dot our farms with picket lines, and I
could not go or come across lots without a pass, I should resist, or
else emigrate. If Concord were as beautiful as Paradise, it would be
as detestable to me."

In his essays and letters Emerson gives one the impression of never
using the first words that come to mind, nor the second, but the third
or fourth; always a sense of selection, of deliberate choice. To use
words in a novel way, and impart a little thrill of surprise, seemed
to be his aim. This effort of selection often mars his page. He is
rarely carried away by his thought, but he snares or captures it with
a word. He does not feel first and think second; he thinks first, and
the feeling does not always follow. He dearly loved writing; it was
the joy of his life, but it was a conscious intellectual effort. It
was often a kind of walking on stilts; his feet are not on the common
ground. And yet--and yet--what a power he was, and how precious his
contributions!

He says in his Journal, "I have observed long since that to give the
thought a full and just expression I must not prematurely utter it."
This hesitation, this studied selection robs him of the grace of
felicity and spontaneity. The compensation is often a sense of novelty
and a thrill of surprise. Moreover, he avoids the commonplace and the
cheap and tedious. His product is always a choice one, and is seen to
have a quality of its own. No page has more individuality than his,
and none is so little like the page of the ordinary professional
writer.

'Tis a false not