they should comport
themselves, and more definitely yet do we know the things they should
not do. We know what is right and what is wrong, while they, poor
things! do not. We know whom and when they should marry, how their
children should be educated and trained, and what servants they should
employ.

We know for what pursuit each one is best fitted and how each should
occupy his spare time. We know to what church all should go; what creed
all should believe. We know what particular traits are faults and how
these can be corrected. We know so much about other people that we often
have not time to give due attention to ourselves. We neglect our own
affairs that we may unselfishly direct others, and sometimes suffer in
consequence, for nobody but a lawyer makes a good living by attending to
other people's business.

[Sidenote: Theoretically]

Theoretically, this should be pleasing to each one. Every person of
sense should be delighted at being told just what to do. It would
relieve him from all care, all responsibility; the necessity for
thought, planning, and individual judgment would be wholly removed.

The musical student would not have to select his own instrument, his own
teacher, nor even his own practice time. Every author would know just
how and when to write, and in order to become famous, he need only act
upon the suggestions for stories and improvement of style which are
gratuitously given him from day to day, by people who cannot write a
clear and correct sentence. This thing actually happened; consequently
it is just the theme for fiction. This plot, suitably developed, would
make the nations sit up, and send the race by hundred thousands to the
corner bookstore.

The cares incident to selecting a wardrobe would be wholly removed.
Every woman knows how every other should dress. Her sure taste selects
at a glance the thing which will best become the other, and over which
the Unenlightened may ponder for hours.

[Sidenote: A Common Vanity]

There is no more common vanity than claiming to "know" some particular
person. We are "all things to all men." The two who love each other
better than all the world beside, have much knowledge, but it is not by
any means complete. "Souls reach out to each other across the impassable
gulfs of individual being." And yet, daily, people who have no sympathy
with us, and scarcely a common interest, will assume to "know" us, when
we do not fully know ourselves, and when w