There are thousands of mole-eyed people who count all passion in print a
lie,--people who will grow into a rage at trifles, and weep in the dark,
and love in secret, and hope without mention, and cover it all under
the cloak of what they call--propriety. I can see before me now some
gray-haired old gentleman, very money-getting, very correct, very
cleanly, who reads the morning paper with unction, and his Bible with
determination,--who listens to dull sermons with patience, and who prays
with quiet self-applause; and yet there are moments belonging to his
life, when his curdled affections yearn for something that they have
not,--when his avarice oversteps all the commandments,--when his pride
builds castles full of splendor; and yet put this before his eye, and he
reads with the most careless air in the world, and condemns as arrant
fiction, what cannot be proved to the elders.

We do not like to see our emotions unriddled: it is not agreeable to the
proud man to find his weaknesses exposed; it is shocking to the
disappointed lover to see his heart laid bare; it is a great grief to
the pining maiden to witness the exposure of her loves. We do not like
our fancies painted; we do not contrive them for rehearsal: our dreams
are private, and when they are made public, we disown them.

I sometimes think that I must be a very honest fellow for writing down
those fancies,--which every one else seems afraid to whisper. I shall at
least come in for my share of the odium in entertaining such fancies:
indeed I shall expect the charge of entertaining them exclusively, and
shall scarce expect to find a single fellow-confessor, unless it be some
pure and innocent-thoughted girl, who will say _peccavi_ to--here and
there--a single rainbow fancy.