Today Is A King In Disguise.

There Is A Mortifying Experience In Particular, Which Does Not Fail To Wreak Itself Also In The General History; I Mean "the Foolish Face Of Praise," The Forced Smile Which We Put On In Company Where We Do Not Feel At Ease, In Answer To Conversation Which Does Not Interest Us. The Muscles, Not Spontaneously Moved But Moved, By A Low Usurping Wilfulness, Grow Tight About The Outline Of The Face, With The Most Disagreeable Sensation.

Wit Makes Its Own Welcome, And Levels All Distinction. No Dignity, No Learning, No Force Of Character, Can Make Any Stand Against Good Wit. It Is Like Ice, On Which No Beauty Of Form, No Majesty Of Carriage, Can Plead Any Immunity; They Must Walk Gingerly, According To The Laws Of Ice, Or Down They Must Go, Dignity And All.

The Walls Of Rude Minds Are Scrawled All Over With Facts, With Thoughts. They Shall One Day Bring A Lantern And Read The Inscriptions.

Our Debt To Tradition Through Reading And Conversation Is So Massive, Our Protest So Rare And Insignificant-and This Commonly On The Ground Of Other Reading And Hearing-that In Large Sense, One Would Say There Is No Pure Originality. All Minds Quote. Old And New Make The Warp And Woof Of Every Moment. There Is No Thread That Is Not A Twist Of These Two Strands. By Necessity, By Proclivity, And By Delight, We All Quote. It Is As Difficult To Appropriate The Thoughts Of Others As It Is To Invent.

But A Compassion For That Which Is Not And Cannot Be Useful And Lovely, Is Degrading And Futile.