the time when I am going to say something about it. The old
Master listened beautifully, except for cutting in once, as I told
you he did. But now he had held in as long as it was in his nature to
contain himself, and must have his say or go off in an apoplexy,
or explode in some way.--I think you're right about the poets,--he
said.--They are to common folks what repeaters are to ordinary watches.
They carry music in their inside arrangements, but they want to be
handled carefully or you put them out of order. And perhaps you must
n't expect them to be quite as good timekeepers as the professional
chronometer watches that make a specialty of being exact within a few
seconds a month. They think too much of themselves. So does everybody
that considers himself as having a right to fall back on what he calls
his idiosyncrasy. Yet a man has such a right, and it is no easy thing to
adjust the private claim to the fair public demand on him. Suppose you
are subject to tic douloureux, for instance. Every now and then a tiger
that nobody can see catches one side of your face between his jaws and
holds on till he is tired and lets go. Some concession must be made to
you on that score, as everybody can see. It is fair to give you a seat
that is not in the draught, and your friends ought not to find
fault with you if you do not care to join a party that is going on a
sleigh-ride. Now take a poet like Cowper. He had a mental neuralgia, a
great deal worse in many respects than tic douloureux confined to the
face. It was well that he was sheltered and relieved, by the cares of
kind friends, especially those good women, from as many of the burdens
of life as they could lift off from him. I am fair to the poets,--don't
you agree that I am?

Why, yes,--I said,--you have stated the case fairly enough, a good deal
as I should have put it myself.

Now, then,--the Master continued,--I 'll tell you what is necessary to
all these artistic idiosyncrasies to bring them into good square human
relations outside of the special province where their ways differ
from those of other people. I am going to illustrate what I mean by a
comparison. I don't know, by the way, but you would be disposed to think
and perhaps call me a wine-bibber on the strength of the freedom with
which I deal with that fluid for the purposes of illustration. But I
make mighty little use of it, except as it furnishes me an image now and
then, as it did, for that matter, to the