A good book has no way of recommending itself
except slowly and as it were accidentally from hand to hand. The man
that wrote it must abide his time. He needs, as indeed all men do, the
_faith_ that this world is built not on falsehood and jargon but on
truth and reason; that no good thing done by any creature of God was,
is, or ever can be _lost_, but will verily do the service appointed
for it, and be found among the general sum-total and all of things
after long times, nay after all time, and through eternity itself. Let
him 'cast his bread upon the waters,' therefore, cheerful of heart;
'he will find it after many days.'
"I know not why I write all this to you; it comes very spontaneously
from me. Let it be your satisfaction, the highest a man can have in
this world, that the talent entrusted to you did not lie useless,
but was turned to account, and proved itself to be a talent; and the
'publishing world' can receive it altogether according to their own
pleasure, raise it high on the housetops, or trample it low into the
street-kennels; that is not the question at all, the _thing_ remains
precisely what it was after never such raising and never such
depressing and trampling, there is no change whatever in _it_.
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