THE LONELINESS OF GENIUS BY EDGAR A. BANCROFT Edgar Addison Bancroft, prominent lawyer and publicist of Chicago, was a student in Knox College in 1878 when he won first place in the Inter-state Oratorical Contest with his oration, 'The Loneliness of Genius," of which the following is a portion: Insects swarm; the lion forages alone. Swallows consort in myriads; the condor dwells companionless in the awful solitudes of the Cordilleras. Weakness wars with thousands; might battles a Goliath. Littleness is gregarious, greatness is solitary. The grandest realization of civilized society is the man of genius. His individuality is the most distinctive type, and by its very intensity necessitates his insulation. But what is genius? What is life? Call it transcendent mental power; intensity of the intuitive and inventive faculties; say that it is of the heart, inate, soul-born, incommunicable. But is that all? The mind perceives, the heart feels, and the whole being vibrates with the pulsations of the great truth or strong passion, struggling mightily to the birth. Then genius, by a common instinct of nature in travail, withdraws from the multitude, and in silence and in solitude, inswathes the bright children of its soul. Not in courts nor palaces nor classic halls nor coteries of the learned are deepest emotions felt or embodied, grandest truths discovered or sublimest conceptions begotten or born; but from Sinai's slopes and the shores of Gennesaret, from the chambers of blindness in London and the Felon's cell in Bedford, have come the revelations that bless mankind. An almost necessary concomitant, the peculiar charm of lofty intellects, as of mountain peaks, is solitariness. Were the hundred Alpine summits equally elevated, Mont Blanc would little engage the poet's pen or the tourist's eye. But peerless and cloud-rapt, he towers in cold sublimity to companionship with the stars. So genius, upborne by a faith that gazes upon the ineffable, holds lofty communion with the universal soul above and around it. Think of the prophet at Horeb; the royal Buddha in the caves of India; the divine Dante wandering like the shade of an unburied Greek; Gibbon weaving his chaplet of immortelles by the lonely waters of Leman, and Byron gathering on the deserted shores of the Aegean the jewels which today glitter in the diadem of his fame. Oh, the solitude of great minds! How they shun the great crowds and seek peace and inspiration amid the solemn beauties and lone sublimities of nature! They wander through "the pathless woods"; they linger on the wave washed beach, awed and thrilled by the deep anthems of the sea; they stand alone upon the mountaintops and hear unterrified the voice of the storms. "Tis a voice of nature-they know it well. Like the eagle the ororos-the "Lone-flyer" of the Greeks, they gaze with undimmed eyes upon the sun of truth. This is the loneliness of genius. Like Burns, the man of genius may mingle in the busiest scenes of life-at the plow with simple peasants, at the board of Edinburgh's nobility— yet his soul is ever like a star, and dwells apart. The laureate of loneliness was the youthful Shelley. His eye caught the light of a coming dawn, and his soul the freedom of a looked-for age. His life was wed to the interpretation of the soul within, and the grander soul around him. He worshiped nature, ofttimes heard "the still sad music of humanity." Beside him place the unpoetic, tender-hearted Lincoln. His deep, sad eyes and pensive brows gave many a token of loneliness hidden from the popular eye, yet real and pathetic beyond expression. His character was grandly simple. Unconscious and spontaneous, yet vigorous and brave, it is the most unique, solitary, beautiful, in all our history. But these men of genius are insulated more by their finess of mental mechanism and their superlative sensitiveness than by the rough treatment of the world. And the utter absence of sympathy is oftenest their heaviest and keenest grief. Gray's epitaph says "He gained from heaven-'twas all he wished-a friend." Ah, that is it! Admirers, patrons, flatterers—they all have these; but how few have friends! And without intelligent sympathy genius is as much alone along the thoroughfares or in the parlors of a metropolis, as by the sullen crater of Aetna or the voiceless shores of the Arctic Ocean. Isolation not only results from the nature of, but also enhances the power of genius. Not useless are these God-made men on whom abides "the light that never was on sea or land!" Though dwelling companionless and high, yet they are apostles of good to the millions who tread the lowliest vales of earth. The else-too somber web of life they brighten with threads of purple and gold. Into dull souls they breathe the quickening spirit. To the groveling and earth-bound they are angels of a nobler and better life. Interpreters of deeper mysteries, they hold ajar the doors for us of the ineffable. Heralding all grander truths, they are the pioneers of civilization, the exponents and prophets of that golden age for which humanity waits. THE MAN BY CHRISTOPHER MORLEY From a story by Christopher Morley, American author and editor. The big room was very still. One of the long French windows stood ajar, and in the air which slipped through was a clean moist whiff of coming spring. It was the end of March. In the leather armchair by the wide, flat desk, sat a man. His chin was on his chest; the lowered head and droop of the broad, spare shoulders showed the impact of some heavy burden. His right hand, the long nervous hand of a scholar, rested on the blotting pad. A silver pen had slipped from his fingers as he sat in thought. On the desk lay some typed sheets which he was revising. Sitting there, his mind had been traversing the memories of the past two and a half years. Every line of his lean, strong figure showed some trace of the responsibilities he had borne. In the greatest crisis of modern times he had steadfastly pursued an ideal, regardless of the bitterness of criticism and the sting of ridicule. Never, perhaps, in the history of the nation had a man been more brutally reviled than he-save one-and his |