"One told me that the people were not educated yet up to such a work, and it was to the people he had to look for success.
"I laid my plans before great artists. Each and all of these dissuaded me from any such undertaking. I called this envy. O the vanity of young manhood!
"I visited printers and lithographers next, as well as engravers. Each and all of these assured me the world was ripe for such a work, and by publishing it myself I should not only secure fame, but all the profits.
"I went home rejoicing, and at once commenced to work out my scheme. I soon after retired to a quiet rural village, and here I lived like a recluse for a whole year, working but dreaming as well.
"My work was finished.
"My book was published. The Easel and the Harp. The Thistle and the Rose!
"It did not go like wild-fire. The critics hardly noticed it, not even to revile. I wished they had. Hardly a copy was sold, and I was all but ruined.
"I saw my vanity when it was too late. How bitterly now I felt the truth of the scriptural text, 'Pride goes before a fall, and haughtiness before destruction.'
"I had not been like the moth that seeks glory by courting a too close acquaintanceship with the candle, and falls groundwards with singed wings; but like the moth that set out to fly to the evening star, when, lo! clouds arose and rain fell, then down came the all too ambitious flutterer, every gossamer featherlet in its downy body draggled and wet, to lie in the grass and suffer sorrow.
"In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.