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KING PELLINORE’S LITERARY MAGAZINE

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you,
the society of your contemporaries, the connection of
events. Great men have always done so, and confided
themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying
their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was
seated at their heart, working through their hands,
predominating in all their being. And we are now men,
and must accept in the highest mind the same
transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a
protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution,
but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the
Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in
the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even
brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a
sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the
strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have
not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet
unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are
disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to
it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of
the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed
youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own
piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious
and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do
not think the youth has no force, because he cannot
speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is
sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to
speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will
know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and
would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to
conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A
boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse;
independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on
such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences
them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys,

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