ways. In refusing, he wrongs the public--the second
evil.... Again, in blunting his own sensibilities and catering to the
common, he stands as a barrier between the public and real creative
energy. He and the public are one. A prostituted taste and a stagnant
popular mind are alike repelled by reality. Rousing creative power
glances from them both. So his third evil is the busheling and harrying
of genius.... There he stands, forcing genius to be common, to appear,
paying well and swiftly only for that which is common. Genius writhes a
bit, starves a bit, but the terrible needs of this complicated life
have him by the throat until he cries "Enough," and presently is
common, indeed.'"

"He need not have spoken of writing only," Beth remarked. "_They_ must
have taught him to see things clearly in the Orient.... You know,
David, I found it hard last night, and a little now, to fix his point
of view and his power to express it, with the life of outdoor men, the
'enlisted,' as he says, rather than the 'commissioned' folk of this
world."

"He has done much reading, but more thinking," Cairns declared. "He has
been much alone, and he has lived. He sees inside. 'The great books of
the world are little books,' he said recently, 'books that a pocket or
a haversack will hold. You don't realize what they have given you,
until you sit down in a roomful of ordinary books and see how tame and
common the quantities are.' And it's true. Look at the big men of few
books. They learned to look _inside_ of books they had! He knows the
Bible, and the _Bhagavad Gita_."

"Oh, I'm beginning to understand," Beth exclaimed. "Nights alone with
the Bible and the _Bhagavad Gita_, and one's schooldays--a weathering
from the open and seasoning from the seas. Men have such chances to
learn the perils and passions of the earth, but so few do.... I see it
now. It isn't remarkable that we find him poised and finished, but that
he should have had the inclination naturally--a child among
sailors--for the great little books of the world, and through them and
his nights alone, to have kept his balance and builded his power."

"That's the point, Beth. New York is crowded with voyagers, and men of
mileage to the moon, but what made this powerful unlettered boy _look_
for the inside of things? What made him different from the packers and
cooks and sailors around the world, boys of the open who never become
men except physically?"

Beth answered: "I think w