ercial_, describing the
"Fair Paradise of the South," the great sugar country, in which he now
found himself, shows how he was gaining in the manipulation of his
material, also gaining in the power of appreciating the splendour of the
vision, the inmost ultimate secret Nature ever reveals to those who can
comprehend and decipher it.

As the little half-blind genius sat on the cotton bales on the deck of
the _Thompson Dean_ those autumn days, peering forth one moment, the
next with nose close to the paper, his pen scratching rapidly,
describing the marvellous pictures, setting down the impressions that
slipped by on either hand, all the joy of an imprisoned tumultuous soul
set free, mentally and morally free, must have come to him. It breathes
in every line, in every paragraph of his work. And not only was this
passionate joy his, but also the exhilarating assurance of knowing that
by self-denial, industry and the determination to succeed he had
achieved and perfected the power to describe and expound the marvellous
pageant to others. From the horizon widening in front of him, through
the "Great South Gate," from "The Gulf" and the Tropics, from Martinique
and Florida came the health-giving breeze, carrying on its wings
courage, regeneration, and the promise of future recognition and fame.

Many were his backslidings, even to the extent of meditating suicide
during the first years of his sojourn in New Orleans, but never did he
fall so morally low as at Cincinnati. That life of sordidness and
ignominy was left behind, the unclean spirit exorcised and cast forth!
He had made his body a house of shame, but that very shame had set
throbbing subtle, infinite vibrations, a spiritual resonance and
response to higher endeavour and hope. He knew himself to be a man
again, sane, clear-brained, his deep appreciation of beauty able to rise
on the heights of the music of utterance as he poured forth the delight
of his soul.

Surely some light from the Louisiana sun must have flashed from the page
athwart the gloom of the dusty office of the _Commercial_; some magic,
bewitching the senses of the practical, hard-headed editor, inducing him
to offer the piece of poetic prose contributed by his "Ozias Midwinter"
correspondent, describing a Louisiana sunrise, to the ordinary reading
public of a Cincinnati daily newspaper.

CHAPTER IX
NEW ORLEANS

"The infinite