t. They
are so fiery, so precipitate, so romantic. They got _themselves_ into
it! Their poesy and romance and folly make them charming as
individuals, but ridiculous as a nation. I like the Poles, but I have
no patience with Poland." How exactly the world's verdict on the
artistic temperament! There is a round hole, and, lo and behold! all
squares must be forced into it!

Suppose that everything resolved itself into the commonplace; where
would be your imagination, your fancy, your rich experience of the
heart and soul? Poland furnishes just this element in history. Her
struggles are so romantic, her follies so charmingly natural to a
high-strung nation, her despair so profound, her frequent revolutions
so buoyant in hope, that she reminds me of a brilliant woman striving
to make dull women understand her, and failing as persistently and
completely as the artistic temperament always fails.

A frog spat at a glowworm. "Why do you spit at me?" said the glowworm.
"Why do you shine so?" said the frog.

Poland's singers have voices so piercingly sweet; her novelists have
pens touched with such divine fire; her actors portray so much of the
soul; her patriots have always shown such reckless and inspiring
bravery; and now, in her desolation and subjection, there is still so
much pride, such noble dignity under her losses, that of all the
countries in the world Poland holds both the heart and mind by a
fascination of which she herself is unconscious, marking a noble
simplicity of soul which is in itself an added indication of her
queenly inheritance.

Julia Marlowe in her _Countess Valeska_ is a Pole to her finger-tips.
Her acting is superb. Cleopatra herself never felt nor inspired a
diviner passion than Valeska; but when it came to a question of her
love or her country she rose above self with an almost superhuman
effort and saved her country at the expense of her love.

No American who has not the same awful passion of patriotism; no one
who is not a lover of his country above home or friends or wife or
children; who does not love his America second only to his God; whose
blood does not prickle in his veins at the sound of "The Star-Spangled
Banner," and whose eyes do not fill with tears at the sight of "Old
Glory" floating anywhere, can understand of what patriotism the Pole
is capable.

Nor can one who has not the foolish, romantic, nervous, high-strung,
artistic temperament understand from within Poland's national