Veneering

I tilinte half tho trouble in this world j comes ot' donig things trom without iri Bti'íid of froia wittiin. Imitation seems I to be eme of tho uecessary experiencei of youth. Indeed, oue may say that measj les ara a sort of imitation. It is pititul to s') a person of so-called matiirity lin goriug in this grado ot' culture. Yet ] how many artists do yon find far bevond j it ? W iiuu 1 say artists I imply all men I - for evorybody is using some sort of artífice ; if in no other way, tben in tho struoture of his lifo. The fault wilh this j vast raft of iuaditod writing- the greit army of stories, for instance, that tnaroh■ 53 "'P yearly to bo slaughtered without ruth at editorial batteiies - is that it is not sincere. A girl has been reading ! conventional novéis all her little Jifo, I ud a yearning grows in her conscionsI ness - not to sai soniething, büt to writo a story. Sue cutehes the poorest part - tho trick of forin - and vonders that tho i editor or publUher does not see that this is the thing the world wants. It is a body without a soul, and by no means a perlect body eittter; asilónos adrertisement i'oi a traycliug cothpanion should bo ansvvered by the talking automaton ; or aa ii' a raan, longing ior the Bard of Abbjtsford hiraself should be confrontad by that inibeoile effiííy on the Mali in tho Central Park, popularly known as the Scott Statue. It c.innot be denied that n lat-gs part of wluit is supposud to bo the real literatuio of our day is as fnlse in quality as tho crudc stuft' that nuver sees the light. Yet I thiuk wo need not bo greatly troubled by tbe easy acceptanoe granted to persuasive aflectation. It holds in its beurt the sueds ot' its own dissolution, which time never failu to ripsn Nothing insincere can live - itl art, love, Ufe. If thffe had not been an element of sincerity in the Devil hiuiself, he would hava been dead long ago. The bust etylist (a word I can hardly brihg niyselï to utter) is the writeï VVho, ïü tiie tiet and lervor oí expression, utterly i'orgets his phrasea. The meaner and inore inadequate seem to hi.tu the worda th&t are fiung frota his mind in the agony to presa somehow neitr - to give fortu with soine degree of certainty an oütline of - the uiigb.ly, uuubstantml thought, the fitter aud will be the style. The greatest dÍ8Course I ever heard, thu most tuwcring in thouglit and argument, the mot tremendous us exhibiting the possibilitie of aüointed human genius ; in delivery so far surpassitlg any ideal I had i'ormed oí' human eloquenoe, that the very word seems by comparison tarae and insipid, - these discourses, I say, were in all subtlo shadings of exprtssion, in all tnero refinements of phiasu, most exquisito and oomplite. When I say the eduoation of nj'iuy persons seems to serve nierely as a laoqner, I do not mean that it was given them or that they took it for simpla show. But either it was of the kind that had 110 power to enter the blood, or the blood had no power to absorb it. Wben you fiud a man whose aduoatiyn has permoated his lite - well, then you fiud a man of "culture," I suppose. It would be well if yon oould liad more of them. I becamo so tired of all thia veneering in art, eduoation, oonversation, inoráis and the rest, that I confesa to a transient sympathy for certain sincere foruis of wiekedness. No one can doubt that sin ie a peritiitted ovil - 'and I can readily imagino that a soul inay come otlt quite as vigorous from a swoon of undeceiving, passiouate crime, as from a Ufe constraiued by an ill-fitting, hard-jointed, artificial shall of any kind - eVeli though you cali tho shell ïnorality, even though you cali it, l'alsely, religión. Tha living - the doing - froin ■within, re the oiily true. í want no man 'acode, no man's doctrine; I respect the codes of all men, tho doctrines of all ; I am egev to search and know but I must know of niysolf, and not ot' another. I am talking now only for myself - and for ray " doubloe," wherever they may be. Soine people seem to knoy thiugs by the ünowluage. J. nover Knaw unyiuiug uu,il I feit it. 1 have thought that I krcow t- but I did not. The trite8t proverbie thing that I supposad went without he gaying - has leaped, with an exporietice, into a möaning that had been, till ,hat moment, utterly hiddeu from me. All hail, slow-aouled brothers of mine 't So that we get the thing at last, let us je glad and mourn not, There is a reoomnense. He. the Maker of Time,