they would behave better and find a more amiable occupation for their
intervals of business. In brief, after a close intimacy with myself for
a longer period than I choose to mention, I find within me a permanent
longing for approbation, sympathy, and love.

Yet I am a bachelor, and the person I love best has never loved me, or
known that I loved her. Though continually in society, and caring about
the joys and sorrows of my neighbours, I feel myself, so far as my
personal lot is concerned, uncared for and alone. "Your own fault, my
dear fellow!" said Minutius Felix, one day that I had incautiously
mentioned this uninteresting fact. And he was right--in senses other
than he intended. Why should I expect to be admired, and have my company
doated on? I have done no services to my country beyond those of every
peaceable orderly citizen; and as to intellectual contribution, my only
published work was a failure, so that I am spoken of to inquiring
beholders as "the author of a book you have probably not seen." (The
work was a humorous romance, unique in its kind, and I am told is much
tasted in a Cherokee translation, where the jokes are rendered with all
the serious eloquence characteristic of the Red races.) This sort of
distinction, as a writer nobody is likely to have read, can hardly
counteract an indistinctness in my articulation, which the
best-intentioned loudness will not remedy. Then, in some quarters my
awkward feet are against me, the length of my upper lip, and an
inveterate way I have of walking with my head foremost and my chin
projecting. One can become only too well aware of such things by looking
in the glass, or in that other mirror held up to nature in the frank
opinions of street-boys, or of our Free People travelling by excursion
train; and no doubt they account for the half-suppressed smile which I
have observed on some fair faces when I have first been presented before
them. This direct perceptive judgment is not to be argued against. But I