Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/193

 to be frivolous. Wait, and thy soul shall speak. Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips.



“Vain to hope to come nearer to a man by getting into his house. If unlike, his soul only flies the faster from you, and you shall catch never a true glance of his eye. We see the noble afar off, and they repel us; why should we intrude? Late—very late—we perceive that no antagonism, no introduction, no consuetudes, or habits of society, should be of any avail to establish us in such relations with them as we desire,—but solely the uprise of nature in us to the same degree it is in them, then shall we meet as water with water; and if we should not meet them then, we shall not want them, for we are already they.



“Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends. By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great. You become pronounced. You demonstrate yourself so as to put yourself out of the reach of false relations, and you draw to you the first-born of the world—those rare pilgrims whereof only one or two wander in nature at once, and before whom the vulgar great show as spectres and shadows merely.



“It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew to carry a friendship greatly on one side, without the correspondence of the other. Why should I cumber myself with the poor fact that the receiver is not capacious? It never troubles the sun that some of his rays fall wide and vain into ungrateful space, and only a small part on the reflecting planet. Let your greatness