whom he is to preach, and that the advices he addresses to them are addressed quite as solemnly to himself, will assume no conceited airs of elevation above them, but will unconsciously wear the demeanor of any sincere worshipper, somewhat deepened in solemnity by the remembrance of his heavy personal responsibility in leading the congregation’s worship; but assuredly and entirely free from the vulgar conceit which may be fostered in a vulgar mind by the reflection, “Now everybody is looking at me!” I have seen, I regret to say, various distinguished preachers whose pulpit demeanor was made to me inexpressibly offensive by this taint of self-consciousness.  And I have seen some, with half the talent, who made upon me an impression a thousandfold deeper than ever was made by the most brilliant eloquence; because the simple earnestness of their manner said to every heart, “Now I am not thinking in the least about myself, or about what you may think of me:  my sole desire is to impress on your hearts these truths I speak, which I believe will concern us all forever!” I have heard great preachers, after hearing whom you could walk home quite at your ease, praising warmly the eloquence and the logic of the sermon.  I have heard others, (infinitely greater in my poor judgment,) after hearing whom you would have felt it profanation to criticize the literary merits of their sermon, high as those were:  but you walked home thinking of the lesson and not of the teacher, solemnly revolving the truths you had heard, and asking the best of all help to enable you to remember them and act upon them.

There are various ways in which self-consciousness disagreeably evinces its existence; and there is not one, perhaps, more disagreeable than the affected avoidance of what is generally regarded as egotism.  Depend upon it, my reader, that the straightforward and natural writer who frankly uses the first person singular, and says, “I think thus and thus,” “I have seen so and so,” is thinking of himself and his own personality a mighty deal less than the man who is always employing awkward and roundabout forms of expression to avoid the use of the obnoxious I.  Every such periphrasis testifies unmistakably that the man was thinking of himself; but the simple, natural writer, warm with his subject, eager to press his views upon his readers, uses the I without a thought of self, just because it is the shortest, most direct, and most natural way of expressing himself.  The recollection of his own personality probably never once crossed his mind during the composition of the paragraph from which an ill-set critic might pick out a score of I-s.  To say, “It is submitted” instead of “I think,” “It has been observed” instead of “I have seen,” “The present writer” instead of “I,” is much the more really egotistical.  Try to write an essay without using that vowel which some men think the very shibboleth of egotism, and the remembrance of yourself will be