PAGANINI

Some time ago, after my lecture one night in Boston, I bethought me to
call on my old friend Bliss Carman. I expected he would be sleeping the
sleep of the just, but I was prepared to rout him out, for although my
errand was from a fair, frail young thing, and trivial, yet I was bound
to deliver the message--for that is what one should always do.

But the poet was not abed--he was pacing the room in a fine burst of
poetic fervor, composing "More Songs From Vagabondia." The songs told of
purling streams, hedgerows, bathers lolling on the river-bank, nodding
wild flowers, chirping pewees, and other such poetic properties, which
the singer conjured forth from boyhood's days, long since gone by.

This suite of rooms, where the poet worked, was in a fine house on a
fashionable street, and I noticed the place bore every mark of elegant
bachelor ease and convenience that good taste could dictate. The best
"Songs From Vagabondia," I am told, are written in comfortable
apartments, where there are a bath and a Whitely Exerciser; but patient,
persistent effort and work overtime are necessary to lick the lines into
shape so they will live. Good poets run their machinery in double
shifts.

"Go away!" cried Bliss Carman, when he had opened the door in reply to
my sprightly knock. "Go away! I am giving to airy nothings a local
habitation and a name. This is my busy night--do you not see?" And fully
understanding the conditions, for I am a poet myself, I went away and
left the author to his labors.

It is a mistake to assume that genius is the capacity for evading hard
work. "La Vie de Boheme" is a beautiful myth that was first worked out
with consummate labor by a man of imagination named Murger, and told
again with variations by Balzac and Du Maurier. Boheme is not down on
the map, because it is not a money-order post-office. It is only a Queen
Mab fairy fabric of a warm, transient desire; its walls being
constructed of the stuff that dreams are made of, and its little life is
rounded with a pipe and tabor, two empties and a brass tray. Yet the
semblance of the thing is there and this often deceives the very elect.
Around every art studio are found the young men in velveteen who smoke
infinite cigarettes, and throw off opinions about this great man and
that, and prate prosaically in blase monotone of the Beautiful.
Sometimes these young persons give lectures on "Art as I Have Found It";
but do not be deceived by this-