I would like to live for
a while with men and women, rather than with human sheep blindly
following a leader. Life is something better than a sheep-path
aimlessly skirting the hills. It is a growth upward through the
infinite blue into heaven. It is the spreading of many and various
branches. If you are a willow, don't attempt to be a pine, and if the
Lord made you to grow like an elm don't pattern yourself after a scrub
oak. The rebuke "what will people say?" should never be applied to the
waywardness of a child. Teach it rather to ask: "How will my own
self-respect stand this test?" Such training will evolve something
rarer in the way of development than a candle-mold or a yard-stick.
XXXVI.
TWO TYPES.
How full the streets are, to be sure! Where do all the folks come from
and where do they stop? Surely there are not roofs enough to cover the
steady stream of humanity that courses through the thoroughfares from
dawn to night time. To one who walks much to and fro in the town there
comes a rare chance to study human types. Books hold nothing within
their covers so grotesque and so pathetic, so inexplicable and so queer
as the folks that jostle one another on the streets! There is the
precise female who nips along in a little apologetic way, as though
there was an impropriety in the very act of locomotion for which she
would fain atone.
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