with the true, the beautiful and
the good, since we are endowed with the faculty of creating.

"Genius," says Whipple, "may almost be defined as the faculty of
acquiring poverty." It is the men of talent who make money out of the
work of the men of genius. Somebody has truly said, that the greatest
works have brought the least benefit to their authors. They were beyond
the reach of appreciation before appreciation came.

There is an Eastern legend of a powerful genius, who promised a
beautiful maiden a gift of rare value if she would pass through a field
of corn and, without pausing, going backward, or wandering hither and
thither, select the largest and ripest ear,--the value of the gift to be
in proportion to the size and perfection of the ear she should choose.
She passed through the field, seeing a great many well worth gathering,
but always hoping to find a larger and more perfect one, she passed them
all by, when, coming to a part of the field where the stalks grew more
stunted, she disdained to take one from these, and so came through to
the other side without having selected any.

A man may make millions and be a failure still. Money-making is not the
highest success. The life of a well-known millionaire was not truly
successful. He had but one ambition. He coined his very soul into
dollars. The almighty dollar was his sun, and was mirrored in his heart.
He strangled all other emotions and hushed and stifled all nobler
aspirations. He grasped his riches tightly, till stricken by the scythe
of death; when, in the twinkling of an eye, he was transformed from one
of the richest men who ever lived in this world to one of the poorest
souls that ever went out of it.

Lincoln always yearned for a rounded wholeness of character; and his
fellow lawyers called him "perversely honest." Nothing could induce him
to take the wrong side of a case, or to continue on that side after
learning that it was unjust or hopeless. After giving considerable time
to a case in which he had received from a lady a retainer of two hundred
dollars, he returned the money, saying: "Madam, you have not a peg to
hang your case on." "But you have earned that money," said the lady.
"No, no," replied Lincoln, "that would not be right. I can't take pay
for doing my duty."

Agassiz would not lecture at five hundred dollars a night, because he
had no time to make money. Charles Sumner, when a senator, declined to
lecture at any price, saying that