minutes with a great man.  And it is an awful thing, when some clever youth is introduced to some local poet who has been told how greatly the clever youth admires him, and what vast expectations the clever youth has formed of his conversation, and when the local celebrity makes a desperate effort to talk up to the expectations formed of him.  I have witnessed such a scene; and I can sincerely say that I could not previously have believed that the local celebrity could have made such a fool of himself.  He was resolved to show that he deserved his fame, and to show that the mind which had produced those lovely verses in the country newspaper could not stoop to commonplace things.

* * * * *

Undue sensitiveness, and a too lowly estimate of their own powers, hang heavily upon some men,—­probably upon more men than one would imagine.  I believe that many a man whom you would take to be ambitious, pushing, and self-complacent, is ever pressed with a sad conviction of inferiority, and wishes nothing more than quietly to slip through life.  It would please and satisfy him, if he could but be assured that he is just like other people.  You may remember a touch of nature (that is, of some people’s nature) in Burns; you remember the simple exultation of the peasant mother, when her daughter gets a sweetheart:  she is “well pleased to see her bairn respeckit like the lave,” that is, like the other girls round.  And undue humility, perhaps even befitting humility, holds back sadly in the race of life.  It is recorded that a weaver in a certain village in Scotland was wont daily to offer a singular petition; he prayed daily and fervently for a better opinion of himself.  Yes, a firm conviction of one’s own importance is a great help in life.  It gives dignity of bearing; it does (so to speak) lift the horse over many a fence at which one with a less confident heart would have broken down.  But the man who estimates himself and his place humbly and justly will be ready to shrink aside, and let men of greater impudence and not greater desert step before him.  I have often seen, with a sad heart, in the case of working people that manner, difficult to describe, which comes of being what we in Scotland sometimes call sair hadden down.  I have seen the like in educated people, too.  And not very many will take the trouble to seek out and to draw out the modest merit that keeps itself in the shade.  The energetic, successful people of this world are too busy in pushing each for himself to have time to do that.  You will find that people with abundant confidence, people who assume a good deal, are not unfrequently taken at their own estimate of themselves.  I have seen a Queen’s Counsel walk into court, after the case in which he was engaged had been conducted so far by his junior, and conducted as well as mortal could conduct it.  But it was easy to see that the complacent air of superior strength with which the Queen’s Counsel