But as private father confessor, I always allow as much as I can for the one chance in the hundred.  I try not to take away all hope, unless the case is clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into some other channel.

Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely.  I have counselled more than one aspirant after literary fame to go back to his tailor’s board or his lapstone.  I have advised the dilettanti, whose foolish friends praised their verses or their stories, to give up all their deceptive dreams of making a name by their genius, and go to work in the study of a profession which asked only for the diligent use of average; ordinary talents.  It is a very grave responsibility which these unknown correspondents throw upon their chosen counsellors.  One whom you have never seen, who lives in a community of which you know nothing, sends you specimens more or less painfully voluminous of his writings, which he asks you to read over, think over, and pray over, and send back an answer informing him whether fame and fortune are awaiting him as the possessor of the wonderful gifts his writings manifest, and whether you advise him to leave all,—­the shop he sweeps out every morning, the ledger he posts, the mortar in which he pounds, the bench at which he urges the reluctant plane,—­and follow his genius whithersoever it may lead him.  The next correspondent wants you to mark out a whole course of life for him, and the means of judgment he gives you are about as adequate as the brick which the simpleton of old carried round as an advertisement of the house he had to sell.  My advice to all the young men that write to me depends somewhat on the handwriting and spelling.  If these are of a certain character, and they have reached a mature age, I recommend some honest manual calling, such as they have very probably been bred to, and which will, at least, give them a chance of becoming President of the United States by and by, if that is any object to them.  What would you have done with the young person who called on me a good many years ago, so many that he has probably forgotten his literary effort,—­and read as specimens of his literary workmanship lines like those which I will favor you with presently?  He was an able-bodied, grown-up young person, whose ingenuousness interested me; and I am sure if I thought he would ever be pained to see his maiden effort in print, I would deny myself the pleasure of submitting it to the reader.  The following is an exact transcript of the lines he showed me, and which I took down on the spot: 

    “Are you in the vein for cider? 
     Are you in the tune for pork? 
     Hist! for Betty’s cleared the larder
     And turned the pork to soap.”