best of it. But who could bear a mixture of both? What genius could rise
superior to it, could be itself, surrounded by such uncertainties?

No wonder that your son comes into the room with a confused expression of
uncomfortable pain on every feature, when he does not in the least know
whether he will be recognized as a gentleman, or overlooked as a little
boy. No wonder he sits down in his chair with movements suggestive of
nothing but rheumatism and jack-knives, when he is thinking that perhaps
there may be some reason why he should not take that particular chair, and
that, if there is, he will be ordered up.

No wonder that your tall daughter turns red, stammers, and says foolish
things on being courteously spoken to by strangers at dinner, when she is
afraid that she may be sharply contradicted or interrupted, and remembers
that day before yesterday she was told that children should be seen and
not heard.

I knew a very clever girl, who had the misfortune to look at fourteen as
if she were twenty. At home, she was the shyest and most awkward of
creatures; away from her mother and sisters, she was self-possessed and
charming. She said to me, once, "Oh! I have such a splendid time away from
home. I'm so tall, everybody thinks I am grown up, and everybody is civil
to me."

I know, also, a man of superb physique, charming temperament, and uncommon
talent, who is to this day--and he is twenty-five years old--nervous and
ill at ease in talking with strangers, in the presence of his own family.
He hesitates, stammers, and never does justice to his thoughts. He says
that he believes he shall never be free from this distress; he cannot
escape from the recollections of the years between fourteen and twenty,