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Charlemont; Or, the Pride of the Village. a Tale of Kentucky by William Gilmore Simms
page 175 of 518 (33%)
with the language--mere delvers and diggers in a science in which
I secretly felt that I should be a master. In vain did I recall to
mind the fact that I knew the community before which I was likely
to speak; I knew its deficiencies; knew the inferiority of its
idols, and could and should have no sort of fear of its criticism.
But it was myself that I feared. I had mistaken the true censor.
It was my own standards of judgment that distressed and made me
tremble. It was what I expected of myself--what I thought should
be expected of me--that made my weak soul recoil in terror from
the conviction that I must fail in its endeavor to reach the point
which my ambitious soul strove to attain. The fear, in such cases,
produced the very disaster, from the anticipated dread of which
it had arisen. I again failed--failed egregiously--failed utterly
and for ever! I never again attempted the fearful trial. I gave
up the contest, yielded the field to my inferiors, better-nerved,
though inferior, and, with all my learning, all my eloquence, my
voice, my manner; my resources of study, thought, and utterance,
fled from sight--fled here--to bury myself in the wilderness,
and descend to the less ambitious, but less dangerous vocation of
schooling--I trust, to better uses--the minds of others. I had done
nothing with my own."

"Oh, sir, do not say so. Though you may have failed in one department
of human performance, you have succeeded in others. You have lost
none of the knowledge which you then acquired. You possess all the
gifts of eloquence, of manner, of voice, of education, of thought."

"But of what use, my son? Remember, we do not toil for these
possessions to lock them up--to content ourselves, as the miserable
miser, with the consciousness that we possess a treasure known to
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