4 P.M
I am afraid that I gave you too much assurance of your inevitable safety , and you must remember that I did that through faith in your springs of effort ; not in the silly conviction that you will arrive without struggle . Some nuances of character you will have to take for granted in yourself , though you must be careful in confessing them to others . You are unsentimental , almost incapable of affection , astute without being cunning and vain without being proud . Do n't let yourself feel worthless ; often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself ; and do n't worry about losing your `` personality , '' as you persist in calling it ; at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning , at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon , and when you are my age you will give out , as I do , the genial golden warmth of 4 P.M. . If you write me letters , please let them be natural ones . Your last , that dissertation on architecture , was perfectly awful -- so `` highbrow '' that I picture you living in an intellectual and emotional vacuum ; and beware of trying to classify people too definitely into types ; you will find that all through their youth they will persist annoyingly in jumping from class to class , and by pasting a supercilious label on every one you meet you are merely packing a Jack-in-the-box that will spring up and leer at you when you begin to come into really antagonistic contact with the world . An idealization of some such a man as Leonardo da Vinci would be a more valuable beacon to you at present .