Handwritten extract from Blackwood's Magazine, August 1858 (continued) — on the literary man and Home

Continuation of the handwritten extract on a torn sheet, the same hand and ink as page 076. Some text at the top and bottom edges is lost.

[…] [personages than we?] — to say, you are a very able Writer. We acknowledge your influence — we read your Books — we accept your ideal characters into our acquaintance and quote their speeches as we [quote?] the speeches of our friends. We have the highest admiration of your genius, your power and your accomplishments, but we do not acknowledge you as an individual. And if you are wise you will never build your importance as a Man upon your claims as a Writer. It is a bitter and sad blunder in the experience of many a Shipwrecked life. No, every one of us is Man enough in his own home and sanctuary. Let us be sufficiently generous (is letters work) to rejoice that our Work is no drudgery but the work of all others most enjoyable, and if we choose it, most noble — that our day’s work brings us these day’s wages which are not ignoble pieces of money, but comfort, and peace and happiness to our own home, help and succour to the homes of others; and the man among us who is not content, besides all this, with touching hearts and lightening lives, and winning (beauty) bits of light and beauty out of the world to cheer the Wayfarer, but pines to have his class regarded as important Man, is no true brother of our Craft and guild —

This I value for teaching incidentally that Home is the scene of the first duty and the highest duty. That provision for Home is always dignified enough to make a Man. That the practical duties of life are the body of life, all the rest but embellishments — while days wages are not ignoble pieces of money — but the [power?] of [doing?] good [—]