present.  What’s more, they cease to be plebeian in the meaner sense of the word, and achieve at one step a higher caste.  They have broken the conventional type, and all the possibilities of development open at once.  You are still a young, inexperienced girl, and have done little in life except learn your lessons and amuse yourself, yet in your dissatisfaction and aspiration you are almost infinitely removed from what you were yesterday, for you have attained the power to grow and develop.”

“You are too philosophical for me.  How shall I grow or develop?”

“I scarcely know.”

“What definite thing shall I do to-morrow?”

“Do what the plant does.  Receive the influence that tends to quicken your best impulses and purposes; follow your awakened conscience naturally.  Do what seems to you womanly, right, noble in little things or in great things, should there be opportunity.  Did Shakespeare, as a child, propose to write the plays which have made him chief among men?  He merely yielded to the impulse when it came.  The law holds good down to you, my little girl.  You have an impulse which is akin to that of genius.  Instead of continuing your old indolent, strolling gait on the dead level of life, you have left the beaten track and faced the mountain of achievement.  Every resolute step forward takes you higher, even though it be but an inch; yet I cannot see the path by which you will climb, or tell you the height you may gain.  The main thing is the purpose to ascend.  For ihose bent on noble achievement there is always a path.  God only knows to what it may bring you.  One step leads to another, and you will be guided better by the instincts and laws of your own nature than if I tried to lead you step by step.  The best I can do is to give you a little counsel, and a helping hand now and then, as the occasion requires.”

“Now in truth, papa, do not all your fine words signify about what you and mamma used to say years ago,—­’You must be a good little girl, and then you will be happy’?  It seems to me that many good people are conventionality itself.”

“Many are, and if they are good, it is a fortunate phase of conventionality.  For instance, I know of a man who by the law of heredity and the force of circumstances has scarcely a bad habit or trait, and has many good ones.  He meets the duties of life in an ordinary, satisfactory way, and with little effort on his part I know of another man who externally presents nearly the same aspect to society, who is quiet and unobtrusive in his daily life, and yet he is fighting hereditary taint and habit with a daily heroism, such as no soldier in the war can surpass.  He is not conventional, although he appears to be so.  He is a knight who is not afraid to face demons.  Genuine strength and originality of character do not consist in saying or doing things in an unusual way.  Voluntary eccentrics are even worse than the imitators of some model or the careless