is reason. At the time of the creation,
when all except man had been made, the Angel of Life, who had been
bidden to summon the world out of chaos, moving over the fresh and yet
innocent earth, thought to himself, 'I have created so much that is
doomed to suffer for ever, and for ever be mute; I will now create an
animal that shall be compensated for all suffering by listening to the
sound of its own voluble chatter.' Whereon the Angel called Man into
being, and cut the _fraenum_ of his tongue, which has clacked incessantly
ever since, all through the silence of the centuries."

* * *

There was once a dog, my dear, that was hit by three men, one after
another, as they went by him where he lay in the sun; and in return he
bit them--deep--and they let him alone then, and ever after sought to
propitiate him. Well, the first he bit in the arm, where there was a
brand for deserting; and the second he bit in the throat, where there
was a hideous mole; and the third he bit in the shoulder, where there
was the mark of a secret camorra. Now, not one of these three durst
speak of the wounds in places they all wished to hide; and whenever
afterwards they passed the dog, they gave him fair words, and sweet
bones, and a wide berth. It is the dogs, and the satirists, and the
libellers, and the statesmen who know how to bite like that--in the
weak part--that get let alone, and respected, and fed on the fat of the
land.

* * *

For him by whom a thirsty ear is lent to the world's homage, the tocsin
of feebleness, if not of failure, has already sounded.

The gladness of the man is come when the crowds lisp his name, and the
gold fills his hand, and the women's honeyed adulations buzz like golden
bees about his path; but how often is the greatness of the artist gone,
and gone for ever!

Because when the world denies you it is easy to deny the world; because
when the bread is bitter it is easy not to linger at the meal; because
when the oil is low it is easy to rise with dawn; because when the body
is without surfeit or temptation it is easy to rise above earth on the
wings of the spirit. Poverty is very terrible to you, and kills your
soul in you sometimes; but it is like the northern blast that lashes men
into Vikings; it is not the soft, luscious south wind that lulls them
into lotos-eaters.

* * *

I have grave doubts of Mrs. Siddons. She was a goddess of the age of