If a man had suspected Tom of such a feeling, I fear he would have cared little, save how to restore the balance by making a fool of the man who fancied him a fool: but no male self-sufficiency or pride is proof against the contempt of woman; and Tom slunk along by the schoolmistress's side, as if he had been one of her naughtiest school-children.

The sufficiency to the mind of these, "For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich," is the very pith and purpose of the speech.

If children would realize their weakness and foolishness more in these days, they would develop into better men and women, but self-sufficiency and self-conceit are signs of the times!"

Let not my friend say that the error was merely intellectual: blundering self-sufficiency is a moral weakness.