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230 gave any one the whole advantage of myself. I never afforded him the culture of my love. How can I talk of charity who at last withhold the kindness which alone makes charity desirable. The poor want nothing less than me myself, and I shirk charity by giving rags and meat. What can I give or what deny to another bat myself?

That person who alone can understand you you cannot get out of your mind.

The artist must work with indifferency. Too great interest vitiates his work.

March 25, 1858. I see many fox-colored sparrows flitting past in a straggling manner into the birch and pine woods on the left, and hear a sweet warble there from time to time. They are busily scratching like hens amid the dry leaves of that wood (not swampy), from time to time the rearmost moving forward one or two at a time, while a few are perched here and there on the lower branches of a birch or other tree, and I hear a very low and sweet whistling strain, commonly half-finished, from one every two or three minutes.

You might frequently say of a poet away from home that he was as mute as a bird of passage, uttering a mere chip from time to time, but follow him to his true habitat, and you shall not know him, he will sing so melodiously.