and other gilded insects."

"Therefore, flying should be dispensed with, I suppose," said Bart.
"Because things of mere painted wings, all wing and nothing else, can
float in the lower atmosphere, are all winged things to be despised?
Birds of strong flight can light and build on or near the ground, but
your barn-yard fowl can hardly soar to the top of the fence for his
crow."

"But your geniuses, Bart, will not work, will not strip to the long,
patient, delving drudgery necessary to unravel, separate, analyze,
weigh, measure, estimate and count, and come to like work for work's
sake, and so grow to do the best and most work. They deal a few heavy
blows, scatter things, pick up a few glittering pebbles, and--"

"Leave to dullards the riches of the mines they never would have
found," broke in Bart.

"And fly away into upper air," pursued Henry.

"Oh, I know that some chaps rise for want of weight, as you would say;
but mere weight will keep a man always at the surface. Your men who
are always plunging into things, digging and turning up the earth--who
believe with the ancients that truth is in a well--often lose
themselves, and are smothered in their own dirt-holes, and call on men
to see how deep they are. God coins with His image on the outside,
as men mint money, and your deep lookers can't see it; they are for
rushing into the bowels of things."

"There is force in that, Bart. Men may see God in His works, if they
will; but men don't so stamp their works. At his best, man is weak;
unknowing truth, he puts false brands on his goods, mixes and mingles,
snarls and confuses, covers up, hides and effaces, so far as he can,
God's works, and palms off as His the works of the other. And it is
with these that the lawyer has to do: a work in which your mere genius
would make little headway. He would go to it without preparation; he
would grow weary of the hopelessness of the task, and fly away to some
pleasant perch, and plume his wing for another flight, I fear."

"Might not his lamp of genius aid him somewhat?" put in Bart.

"It might," said Ranney, "and he might be misled by its flare. He
would do better to use the old lights of the law. Some are a little
lurid, and some a little blue, but always the same in tempest or
calm. The law, as you have doubtless discovered, is founded in a few
principles of obvious right. Their application to cases is artificial.
The law, for its own wise purposes, takes care of itself;