protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides,
redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing
on Chaos[157] and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and
behavior of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel
mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed
the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these[158] have not.
Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we
look in their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody:
all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five[159]
out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth
and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and
made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it
will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he
cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is
sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his
contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us
seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance[160] of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would
disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the
healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlor what the pit
is in the playhouse;[161] independent, irresponsible, looking out from
his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences
them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad,
interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never
about consequences about interests; he gives an independent, genuine
verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as
it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has