You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. "What is this Truth you seek? what is this Beauty?" men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, lie firm, be true. When you shall say, "As others do, so will I: I renounce, am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season" —then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history, and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. . . .Why should you renounce your right to traverse the starlit deserts of truth for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all man's possessions, in art, in nature, and in hope.
