estimation of others?"

"Why no, mother, I suppose not; but I am as good and as much respected
as they are; and I don't like to have it seem that I am beneath them
because I am not so rich, and all that."

"My dear, I believe we have talked this subject over before, and long
ago understood that we desire no position, no companionship which is not
ours by right of moral and intellectual character.

"It is the Christian principle to live in all things for the true and
the right; to be willing to take our own place in business and society,
and fill it well; to think less of what others think of us than of what
we in ourselves are; to appear to be only what we are, and be willing to
appear thus while we are always looking up to something wiser, and
lovelier, and better.

"I never could get the idea of a Christian's being above or beneath any
one in the sense you mean. His associations are, or should be, such as
Christ's were in His walk among men. Christ, infinitely endowed with all
excellence and beauty, was also infinitely humble. He neither sought nor
shunned any one for His own sake, but lived out the divine fullness of
His life of suffering and love without regard to His position or
popularity with men. I said He did not seek others, but I must except
the beloved John, and the household at Bethany, and a few others whom He
loved undoubtedly for their own sake, with a personal, human sort of
attachment."

"You don't mean, mother, that we should never seek people for their own
sake or our own pleasure?"