156 CHKONICLES OF A CLAY FARM. 



must digest before it can * assimilate.' The hungry 

 dog bites your fingers as he takes your morsel : but 

 the food becomes flesh, and the want is forgotten, 

 with the giver.' 



And so I have found it : and so, no doubt, have 

 others. No sooner is a new thought imparted, than 

 it sets up for itself, and denies its pedigree. ( Why, 

 that is exactly what / told you three years ago, when 



you came &c. ! ' you feel on the point of 



rapping out, struck with amazement. 



Spare your breath ! and your reproach. He 

 cannot remember anything but what he now knotvs. 

 He forgets that he ever thought otherwise ! Tell 

 him, now, something new, and you will see again the 

 same derisive smile, the same look of idle wonder, 

 aye of contempt, at your fanciful, ideal, ' theoretic ' 

 notions : and twice twelvemonths hence, when your 

 idea has taken root and become a fact, the scene of 

 to-day will be acted over again. Then go to your 

 Library, large or small, and look back over the 

 history of the world ; and you will see that the 

 annals of human invention and discovery are the true 

 history of Martyrdom, and that to be stoned by his 

 . own generation, and worshipped by the next, is at 

 once the penalty of human pioneership, and the 



