tears, because strength and patience are failing him to speak the difficult word and do the difficult deed. Such I know has been my experience; yet the very opposition I have hitherto met, and the misunderstandings which have barred my pathway, have been blessings in the end, because they threw me back upon God and my own immortal soul. At this day I am unable to discover one single human being whom I hate, or an agony of soul or body whose fruitage has not proved valuable and sweet. Few indeed have been the practical friends in need, whom I have proved and found right-side up in the trial hour; I can count them on the fingers of a single hand, and yet I love the world and the people in it. Endeavoring always to move right, I have often struck the cushions of life, rebounded and carromed against some tremendous misery, and together we have rolled into some dark pocket of despair; but therein glorious thoughts have been gestated, and born in beauty to the world when fairer days dawned, and skies were bright and clearer. I have ever felt that, after all, God and I were a clear majority, and I have ever felt a presence, and from its viewless lips my soul received the cheering charge: —
Speak all thy thoughts, thinker, howsoe'er
They flout the speculations of the age,
Its pet. conceits or fantasies; speak on;
Marshal thy thought like phalanxes of horse;
Scatter the idle dreamers of the time.
The phantom hosts of popular ignorance
Shall strike their cloudy tents, and silently
Shrink to their own nonentity again.
And they shrunk. A few fair-weatherites "damned me with faint praise; " but soon even my championship of woman was tortured against me, and the heartless, brainless pack, yelped, "He's fond of the women ! he's fond of the women, — al-to-geth-er too fond of 'em! "The fools! as if that was a crime, seeing that I came by it naturally, — for my father was so before me, and the fault, like some folks' red hair, is constitutional, and "runs in the family," and is one for which I don't want to be forgiven! — God bless the ladies all! Like the Springfield poet, I plead guilty, and ask" who blames me for it?" Surely no true, pure, genuine man; nor the sex whose battles I have fought so long.
