AN EGOTISTICAL CHAPTEK 255 



Men who, like myself, are deficient in self-asser- 

 tion, or whose personalities are flexible and yield- 

 ing, make a poor show in politics or business, but 

 in certain other fields these defects have their 

 advantages. In action, Eenan says, one is weak 

 by his best qualities, — such, I suppose, as tender- 

 ness, sympathy, religiousness, etc., — and strong 

 by his poorer, or at least his less attractive, quali- 

 ties. But in letters the reverse is probably true. 

 How many of us owe our success in this field to 

 qualities which in a measure disqualified us for an 

 active career! A late writer upon Carlyle seeks to 

 demonstrate that the "open secret of his life" was 

 his desire to take a hand in the actual affairs of 

 English politics; but it is quite certain that the 

 traits and gifts which made him such a power in 

 literature — namely, his tremendous imagination and 

 his burdened prophetic conscience — would have 

 stood in his way in dealing with the coarse affairs 

 of this world. 



In my own case, what hinders me with the world 

 helps me with impersonal nature. I do not stand 

 in my own light. My will, my personality, offer 

 little resistance : they let the shy delicate influences 

 pass. I can surrender myself to nature without 

 effort, but am more or less restrained and self-con- 

 scious in the presence of my fellows. Bird and 

 beast take to me, and I to them. I can look in 

 the eye of an ugly dog and win him, but with an 

 ugly man I have less success. 



I have unmistakably the feminine idiosyncrasy. 



