"The time has been when the words,
policy and calculation, would have cost a companion thy favor!"
"'Tis said that the prodigal of twenty makes? the miser of seventy. It is
certain that even our southern sun does not warm the blood of threescore
as suddenly as it heats that of one. But we will not darken thy daughter's
views of the future by a picture too faithfully drawn, lest she become
wise before her time. I have often questioned, Melchior, which is the most
precious gift of nature, a worm fancy, or the colder powers of reason. But
if I must say which I most love, the point becomes less difficult of
decision. I would prefer each in its season, or rather the two united,
with a gradual change in their influence. Let the youth commence with the
first in the ascendant, and close with the last. He who begins life too
cold a reasoner may end it a calculating egotist; and he who is ruled
solely by his imagination is in danger of having his mind so ripened as to
bring forth the fruits of a visionary. Had it pleased heaven to have left
me the dear son I possessed for so short a period, I would rather have
seen him leaning to the side of exaggeration in his estimate of men,
before experience came to chill his hopes, than to see him scan his
fellows with a too philosophical eye in boyhood.
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