you must not speak, unless you can make your meaning perfectly
intelligible to the person addressed; must not express a
thought, unless you can give a reason for it, if
required; must not make a statement, unless sure of all
particulars--such were his rules. "But," "if," "unless," "I am
mistaken," and "it may be so," were words and phrases excluded
from the province where he held sway. Trained to great
dexterity in artificial methods, accurate, ready, with entire
command of his resources, he had no belief in minds that
listen, wait, and receive. He had no conception of the subtle
and indirect motions of imagination and feeling. His influence
on me was great, and opposed to the natural unfolding of my
character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to
infatuation, and self-forgetfulness. He made the common prose
world so present to me, that my natural bias was controlled. I
did not go mad, as many would do, at being continually roused
from my dreams. I had too much strength to be crushed,--and
since I must put on the fetters, could not submit to let them
impede my motions. My own world sank deep within, away from
the surface of my life; in what I did and said I learned to
have reference to other minds. But my true life was only the
dearer that it was secluded and veiled over by a thick curtain
of available intellect, and that coarse, but wearable stuff
woven by the ages,--Common Sense.

'In accordance with this discipline in heroic common sense,
was the influence of those great Romans, whose thoughts and
lives were my daily food during those plastic years. The
genius of Rome displayed itself in Character, and scarcely
needed an occasional wave of the torch of thought to show its