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wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never Self- varnish your hard, uncharitable amReliance bition with this increditable tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love goodness must have some edge to it-else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company.

Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. SelfAre they my poor? I tell thee, thou Reliance foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are in the popular estimate

rather the exception than the rule. Self- There is the man and his virtues. Reliance Men do what is called a good action,

as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,-as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a conquest, a medicine. I ask

primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself Selfit makes no difference whether I do Reliance or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony

What must I do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after

the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but Self- the great man is he who in the midst Reliance of the crowd keeps with perfect sweet

ness the independence of solitude. The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you, is, that it scatters your force It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible Society, vote with a great party either for the Government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers,-under all these screens, I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are so And of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a

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