The
mechanism of breathing and that of swallowing are very wonderful, and if
one had seen and studied them in his own person only, he might well think
himself a prodigy. Everybody knows these and other bodily faculties are
common gifts; but nobody except editors and school-teachers and here and
there a literary than knows how common is the capacity of rhyming and
prattling in readable prose, especially among young women of a certain
degree of education. In my character of Pontiff, I should tell these
young persons that most of them labored under a delusion. It is very
hard to believe it; one feels so full of intelligence and so decidedly
superior to one's dull relations and schoolmates; one writes so easily
and the lines sound so prettily to one's self; there are such felicities
of expression, just like those we hear quoted from the great poets; and
besides one has been told by so many friends that all one had to do was
to print and be famous! Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at least
nineteen times out of twenty, yes, ninety-nine times in a hundred.
But as private father confessor, I always allow as much as I can for the
one chance in the hundred. I try not to take away all hope, unless the
case is clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into some
other channel.
Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely.
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