When children come into the library, we put the
inkstand and the watch on the high shelf, until they be a little
older; and nature has set the sun and moon in plain sight and use,
but laid them on the high shelf, where her roystering boys may not in
some mad Saturday afternoon pull them down or burn their fingers.
The sea and the iron road are safer toys for such ungrown people; we
are not yet ripe to be birds.
In the next place, to fifteen letters on Communities, and the
Prospects of Culture, and the destinies of the cultivated class, --
what answer? Excellent reasons have been shown us why the writers,
obviously persons of sincerity and of elegance, should be
dissatisfied with the life they lead, and with their company. They
have exhausted all its benefit, and will not bear it much longer.
Excellent reasons they have shown why something better should be
tried. They want a friend to whom they can speak and from whom they
may hear now and then a reasonable word. They are willing to work,
so it be with friends. They do not entertain anything absurd or even
difficult.
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