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With the lapse of years, however, even if Emile could see no better with his eyes, his other faculties had developed so largely as to surrender to him again the joy of independence of outside help, and with characteristic self-reliance and optimism he once more tackled his own difficulties. I was recently visiting a small cottage, built on a tiny ledge under the shadow of gloomy, high cliffs.
"The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is, Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity, custom, and fear. This gives force to the strong, that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.
I look back now smiling at that boyish self-reliance. Mountains have been crossed, but with what heart-breaking struggles? Battles have been won, but with what a toll of suffering? As I recall the day when I first came face to face with real trouble, with a trouble that leaves in the heart a never-healing wound, it was the brightest of all that summer.
It may be that Jack's self-reliance had something to do with it, and that he was too apt to trust to his own strength and wisdom, forgetting that there is One, without whose blessing man's powers can accomplish no good whatever. We know not. We do not charge Jack with this, yet this is by no means an uncommon sin, if we are to believe the confessions of multitudes of good men.
He has new thoughts on Character, Self-Reliance, Heroism, Manners, Experience, Nature, Immortality, and scores of other related subjects every day, and he presents them in new connections and with new images. His mind had marked centrality, and fundamental problems were always near at hand with him. He could not get away from them.
Where these good tidings of great joy are heard. If the principles that are fought out in this drama, in tragic conflict, were to be described by catchwords, we might say: Reason stands against Dogma; Nature against Tradition; Self-Reliance against Submission. The great elementary forces are here at issue, which the Reformation had unchained, and with which we all have to reckon.
I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself;—and as for my son—if I thought he would grow up to be what you call a man of the world—one that has “seen life,” and glories in his experience, even though he should so far profit by it as to sober down, at length, into a useful and respected member of society—I would rather that he died to-morrow!—rather a thousand times!’ she earnestly repeated, pressing her darling to her side and kissing his forehead with intense affection.
Unhappily he also fell in with Byron, the worst poet that can come into the hands of a boy, and always retained for him an admiration which would now be thought excessive. By these means he gained much. He discovered what poetry was, what history was, and he learned also the lesson that no one can teach, the hard lesson of self-reliance.
Delorme and little Maurice, and "hit the trail" for the gold mines. How he hated to leave those two helpless ones alone in the vast, uninhabited surroundings! But Mrs. Delorme had the fearless courage and self-reliance of the women of the North, and little Maurice was yearly growing, growing, growing.
She liked his drollery and his strength, she admired his poise and self-reliance; and she had the greatest respect for his teaching ability, of which she had received direct proof. Still, she was not at all sure that she wished to marry him. After all, she had really known him only something over a month, and it was not the Whitman way to hurry into anything least of all into matrimony.
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