Young men with more ambition and intelligence than force of
character, who have missed their first steps in life and are stumbling
irresolute amidst vague aims and changing purposes, hold out their hands,
imploring to be led into, or at least pointed towards, some path where
they can find a firm foothold. Young women born into a chilling
atmosphere of circumstance which keeps all the buds of their nature
unopened and always striving to get to a ray of sunshine, if one finds
its way to their neighborhood, tell their stories, sometimes simply and
touchingly, sometimes in a more or less affected and rhetorical way, but
still stories of defeated and disappointed instincts which ought to make
any moderately impressible person feel very tenderly toward them.
In speaking privately to these young persons, many of whom have literary
aspirations, one should be very considerate of their human feelings. But
addressing them collectively a few plain truths will not give any one of
them much pain. Indeed, almost every individual among them will feel
sure that he or she is an exception to those generalities which apply so
well to the rest.
If I were a literary Pope sending out an Encyclical, I would tell these
inexperienced persons that nothing is so frequent as to mistake an
ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment.
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