Our history so bristles with instances that a particular concrete case need not be cited.

We know that priests will get more patronage if they discourage the national idea; that professors will get more emoluments and honours if they can ban it; that public men will receive places and titles if they betray it; that the professional man will be promised more aggrandisement, the business man more commerce, and the tradesman more traffic of his kind--if only he put by the flag.

Most treacherous and insidious the temptation will come to the man, young and able, everywhere.

It will say, "You have ability; come into the light--only put that by; it keeps you obscure.

And what purpose does it serve now?
Be practical; come." And you may weaken and yield and enter the light for the general applause, but the old idea will rankle deep down till smothered out, and you will stand in the splendour--a failure, miserable, hopeless, not apparent, indeed, but for all that, final.