LV.

POLICY A DAMASCUS BLADE, NOT A CLUB.

Policy in the hands of a diplomat is like a sharp sword in the grasp of
an able fencer, but policy in the hands of fools, is like a good knife
wielded by a half-wit. It takes brains to be truly politic, the
unfortunate person who attempts to be cautious, and wise, and reticent,
and to let policy thread every action as a string runs through glass
beads, only succeeds in making himself ridiculous. To be afraid to
speak what is in your mind for fear you will make yourself unpopular,
to be too cautious to mention the fact that you are having a new latch
put on your front gate for fear that you might be over-communicative,
to be backward in taking sides for fear of committing yourself to a
losing cause, may be politic to your own feeble intelligence, but in
the estimation of brainy folks it is a species of feline idiocy worse
than fits.




LVI.

THE CONSTANT YEARS BRING AGE TO ALL.

All day long it has been trying to snow out here in the country. To me
not even June, with its showering apple-tree flowers and its
alternations of silver rain and golden sunshine, is more beautiful than