It is only its inborn possibility of and divine tendency toward blossoming that constitute life a good thing.

Life's blossom is its salvation, its redemption, the justification of its existence--and is a thing far off with most of us.

For Tom, his highest notion of life was to be recognized by the world for that which he had chosen as his idea of himself--to have the reviews allow him a poet, not grudgingly, nor with abatement of any sort, but recognizing him as the genius he must contrive to believe himself, or "perish in" his "self-contempt." Then would he live and die in the blessed assurance that his name would be for over on the lips and in the hearts of that idol of fools they call _posterity_-divinity as vague as the old gray Fate, and less noble, inasmuch as it is but the supposed concave whence is to rebound the man's own opinion of himself.
While jewelly Tom was idling away time which yet could hardly be called precious, his little brown wife, as I have said, sat at home--such home as a lodging can be for a wife whose husband finds his interest mainly outside of it--inquired after by nobody, thought of by nobody, hardly even taken up by her own poor, weary self; now trying in vain after interest in the feeble trash she was reading; now getting into the story for the last half of a chapter, to find herself, when the scene changed at the next, as far out and away and lost as ever; now dropping the book on her knee, to sit musing--if, indeed, such poor mental vagaries as hers can be called even musing!--ignorant what was the matter with her, hardly knowing that anything was the matter, and yet pining morally, spiritually, and psychically; now wondering when Tom would be home; now trying to congratulate herself on his being such a favorite, and thinking what an honor it was to a poor country girl like her to be the wife of a man so much courted by the best society--for she never doubted that the people to whose houses Tom went desired his company from admiration of his writings.

She had not an idea that never a soul of them or of their guests cared a straw about what he wrote--except, indeed, here and there, a young lady in her first season, who thought it a grand thing to know an author, as poor Letty thought it a grand thing to be the wife of one.

Hail to the coming time when, those who write books outnumbering those who do not, a man will be thought no more of because he can write than because he can sit a horse or brew beer! In that happy time the true writer will be neither an atom the more regarded nor disregarded; he will only be less troubled with birthday books, requests for autographs, and such-like irritating attentions.