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Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan
fife. Let us bow and apologize never more. A great man is coming to eat
at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to
please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it
kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth
mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of
custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all
history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving
wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place,
but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures
you and all men and all events. You are constrained to accept his
standard. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else,
or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing
else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much that
he must make all circumstances indifferent--put all means into the
shade.


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