and what he does not like.  This is good.  This is precisely what you wish to know, and will indirectly help you.  Another, from the steps of a throne, in a few sentences, it may be, or a few columns, classifies you, interprets you not only to the world, but to yourself; and for this you are immeasurably glad and grateful.  It is neither praise nor censure that you value, but recognition.  Let a writer but feel that a critic reaches into the arcana of his thought, and no assent is too hearty, nor any dissent too severe.  Another glances up from his eager political strife, and with the sincerest kindness pens you a nice little sugar-plum, chiefly flour and water, but flavored with sugar.  Thank you!  Another flounders in a wash of words, holding in solution the faintest salt of sense.  Heaven help him!  Another dips his spear-point in poison and lets fly.  Do you not see that these people are an open book?  Do you not read here the tranquillity of a self-poised life, the Inner sight of clairvoyance, the bitterness of disappointed hopes and unsuccessful plans, the amiability that is not founded upon strength, the pettiness that puts pique above principle, the frankness that scorns affectation, the comprehensiveness that embraces all things in its vision, and commands not only acquiescence, but allegiance, the great-heartedness that by virtue of its own magnetism attracts all that is good and annihilates all that is bad?

When my poor little ewe-lamb went out into the world, I did not fear any shearing he might encounter in America.  I don’t mind my own countrymen.  I like them, but I am not afraid of them.  Two elements go to make up a book:  matter and manner.  The former, of course, is its author’s own.  He maintains it against all comers.  Opposition does not terrify him, for it is a mere difference of opinion.  One is just as likely to be right as another, and in a hundred years probably we shall all be found wrong together.  But manner can be judged by a fixed standard.  Bad English is bad English this very day, whatever you or I think about it; and bad English is a bad thing.  When I know it, I avoid it, except under extreme temptation; but the trouble is, I don’t know it.  I am continually learning that words in certain relations are misplaced where I never suspected the smallest derangement, and, no doubt, there are many dislocations which I have not yet discovered.  So far as my own people are concerned, I don’t take this to heart,—­because my countryman very likely perpetrates three barbarisms in correcting my one.  He knows this thing that I did not, but then I know something else that he does not, and so keep the balance true.  Moreover, my America, if I don’t use good English, whose fault is it?  You have had me from the beginning.  The raw material was as good as the average; why did you not work it up better?  I went to the best schools you gave me.  I learned everything I was set to learn.  You can nowhere find a teacher