ed freely--let himself gush out in words (the way
youth loves to do, and should) there might have been no tale to write
upon the Weirs of Hermiston.

*****

A young man feels himself one too many in the world; his is a painful
situation; he has no calling; no obvious utility; no ties but to his
parents, and these he is sure to disregard. I do not think that a proper
allowance has been made for this true cause of suffering in youth; but
by the mere fact of a prolonged existence, we outgrow either the fact
or else the feeling. Either we become so callously accustomed to our
own useless figure in the world, or else--and this, thank God, in the
majority of cases--we so collect about us the interest or the love of
our fellows, so multiply our effective part in the affairs of life, that
we need to entertain no longer the question of our right to be.

*****

It had been long his practice to prophesy for his second son a career of
ruin and disgrace. There is an advantage in this artless parental habit.
Doubtless the father is interested in his son; but doubtless also the
prophet grows to be interested in his prophecies. If the one goes wrong
the others come true.

*****

When the old man waggles his head and says, 'Ah, so I thought when I
was your age,' he has proved the youth's case. Doubtless, whether from
growth of experience or decline of animal heat, he thinks so no longer;
but he thought so while he was young; and all men have thought so while
they were young, since there was dew in the morning or hawthorn in
May; and here is another young man adding his vote to those of previous
generations and riveting another link to the chain of testimony. It is
as natural and as right for a young man to be imprudent and exaggerated,
to live in swoops and circles, and beat about his cage like any other
wild thing newly captured, as it is for old men to turn grey, or mothers
to love their offspring, or heroes to die for something worthier than
their lives.

*****

Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other
both in mind and body; to try the manners of different nations; to
hear the chimes at midnight; to see sunrise in town and country; to be
converted at a revival; to circumnavigate the metaphysics, write halting
verses, run a mile to see a fire, and wait all day long in the theatre
to applaud HERNANI. There is some meaning in the old theory about wild
oats; and a man who has not had his green-si