it was incapable. A course of reading in the first attempts of such as
rose after to well-merited distinction, might reveal not a few
things--among the rest, their frequent poverty. Much mere babbling often
issues before worthy speech begins. There was nothing in Walter's mind
to be put in form except a few of the vague lovely sensations belonging
to a poetic temperament. And as he grew more and more of a reader, his
inspiration came more and more from what he read, less and less from
knowledge of his own heart or the hearts of others. He had no revelation
to give. He had, like most of our preachers, set out to run before he
could walk, begun to cry aloud before he had any truth to utter; to
teach, or at least to interest others, before he was himself interested
in others. Now and then, indeed, especially when some fading joy of
childhood gleamed up, words would come unbidden, and he would throw off
a song destitute neither of feeling nor music; but this kind of thing he
scarcely valued, for it seemed to cost him nothing.

He comforted himself by concluding that his work was of a kind too
original to be at once recognized by dulled and sated editors; that he
must labor on and keep sending.

"Why do you not write something?" his friend would say; and he would
answer that his time was not come.

The friends he made were not many. Instinctively he shrunk from what was
coarse, feeling it destructive to every finer element. How could he
write of beauty, if, false to beauty, he had but for a moment turned to
the unclean? But he was not satisfied with himself: he had done nothing,
even in his own eyes, while the recognition of the world was lacking!

He was in no anxiety, for he did not imagine it of consequence to his