receives so severe a blow, that it is shattered forever, the
wanderer returning home wiser and much more modest. There seems to
be something fatal to conceit in the air of great centres;
professionally or in general society a man so soon finds his level.

The "great world" may foster other faults; human nature is sure to
develop some in every walk of life. Smug contentment, however,
disappears in its rarefied atmosphere, giving place to a craving
for improvement, a nervous alertness that keeps the mind from
stagnating and urges it on to do its best.

It is never the beautiful woman who sits down in smiling serenity
before her mirror. She is tireless in her efforts to enhance her
beauty and set it off to the best advantage. Her figure is never
slender enough, nor her carriage sufficiently erect to satisfy.
But the "frump" will let herself and all her surroundings go to
seed, not from humbleness of mind or an overwhelming sense of her
own unworthiness, but in pure complacent conceit.

A criticism to which the highly gifted lay themselves open from
those who do not understand them, is their love of praise, the
critics failing to grasp the fact that this passion for measuring
one's self with others, like the gad-fly pursuing poor Io, never
allows a moment's repose in the green pastures of success, but
goads them constantly up the rocky sides of endeavor. It is not
that they love flattery, but that they need approbation as a
counterpoise to the dark moments of self-abasement and as a
sustaining aid for higher flights.

Many years ago I was present at a final sitting which my master,