hos than humor in his periodic visits to the
penguins. Isolated, from childhood, by parental care, from the common
friendships and associations of life, still further isolated in mature
years by his own genius and early and lasting intellectual eminence,
the wonder is that he was not more unhappy, rather than less. He had
few friends, and those few, like Professor Norton, were intellectual
companions as well, always ready and eager to debate with him the
problems of Art and Life which were forever vexing him. Their
companionship must often have been a stimulant--when he needed,
perhaps, a narcotic. Their intercourse drove him continually in upon
himself, where there was only seething unrest, when he needed so often
to be taken completely out of himself, where there was peace. And, in
his hours of need, he turned to the Alps, and the penguins. But both
were dumb things, after all, that could not quite meet his mood, could
not quite satisfy that hunger which is in all of us for the common
association of our kind, for the humble jest and cheery laugh of a
smiling humanity. Neither of them was Bobbie, who adds personality to
the penguin, and satisfies a double need.

Bobbie would not have talked Art with Ruskin, and for a very good
reason,--he knows nothing about it. Bobbie would not have cared a
snap about his Turners, though he would have been greatly reverent of
them for their owner's sake. But Bobbie would have enjoyed tramping
over the mountains with him, an eager and alert listener to all his
talks about geology and clouds, and ten to one Bobbie would have made
friends of every peasant they met, every fellow traveler on the road,
and taught Ruskin in turn a good bit about humdrum, picturesque
mankind. And he would have made him laugh! Possibly you think it
incongruous, impossible, the picture of happy-go-lucky, ridiculous
Bobbie, with his slang and his grin and his outlook on life, and
Ruskin, the great critic, the master of style, the intellectual giant.
But then you reckon without Bobbie's quality of Penguinity, and
without Ruskin's humanness. It is alike impossible to withstand the
contagion of Bobbie's Penguinity, and to fancy a genius so great that
he does not at times yearn for the common walks and the common talks
of his humbler fellow creatures. He may not always know how to achieve
them, his own greatness may be a barrier he cannot cross, or his
temperament and circumstances may hinder; but be sure that he fe