“the good but wished with God is done,”

can you not find it in your heart to “yearn o’er my little good and pardon my much ill”?

Public, you must, whether you can or not.  It is a case of life and death.  I am good for nothing but writing; and if you take that resource away,—­you know what the book says about mischief and Satan and idle hands! and you certainly will take it away, if you do not speak peaceably unto me.  All that I said before was only bravado,—­just to keep a bold front to the foe.  I can confide to you under the rose, that, though without are fightings, within are fears.  Pope, was it, who used to look around upon the missives hurled at him, and say, “These are my amusement”?  But they are not mine.  I want you to like me and be good-natured.  It is not that you must always agree with opinions, or not take exception to what is exceptionable; it is only that you shall not say things in a sour, cross, disagreeable way.  Impale the bait on your arming-wire, but handle it as if you loved it.  Talk thunderbolts, if necessary, but don’t “make faces.”  The soft south-wind is very, charming; the northwest-wind, though sharp, is bracing and healthful; but your raw east-winds,—­oh! chain them in the caverns of AEolia, the country of storms.

Bear with me a little longer in my folly; and, indeed, bear with me, you who are strong, for the sake of the weak.  Many and many there may be to whom the meat of your metaphysics is indigestible and unpalatable, but who find strength and cheer in the sincere milk of such words as I can give.  To you who have already set your feet on the high places, that may be but a bruised reed which is a staff to those who are still struggling up.  Do you go on churning the cream of thought, and salting down its butter for future ages; I will spread it on thin for the weak digestions of this.  Let scarfs, garters, gold amuse your riper stage, and beads and prayer-books be the toys of age, but wax not over-wroth, when you behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, pleased with a rattle!

And after all, Dear Public, it is partly your own fault that I venture to make still further draughts upon your patience.  Though I have trimmed my sails to opposing rather than to favoring gales, it is not because the latter have been wanting.  But a pin that pricks your finger attracts to itself far more attention for the time than the thousand influences that wrap you about only to soothe and delight.  The reception that has been harsh and unfriendly bears no manner of proportion to that which has been genial and generous.  So where you have given me an inch I take an ell, and commission this bright morning—­shine to bear to you my thanks.  For every kind word, whether it have come to me through the highways or the by-ways, from far or near, from known or unknown, I pray you receive my grateful acknowledgment.  And do not fail to remember, that he, who, even though self-impelled, goes out from the shelter of his selfhood into the presence of the great congregation, incurs a Loss which no praise can make good, encounters a Fate against which no appreciation is a shield, invokes a Shadow in which the mens conscia recti is the only resource, and the knowledge of shadows dispelled the only consolation.