-the art that lives is probably being
produced by small, shy, red-headed men who work on a top floor, and whom
you can only find with the help of a search-warrant. One sort talks of
art, the other kind produces it. One tells of truth, the other is
living it.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote the most gruesome stories that have ever been
told, just to prove that life is a tragedy and not worth living. But who
ever lived fuller and applied himself to hard work more conscientiously
in order to make his point? Poe wrote and rewrote, and changed and added
and interlined and balanced it all on his actor's tongue, and read it
aloud before the glass. Poe shortened his days and flung away a valuable
fag-end of his life, trying to show that life is not worth living, and
thus proved it is. Gray spent thirteen years writing his "Elegy," and so
made clear the point that the man who does good work does not at the
last lay him down and rest his head upon the lap of earth, a youth to
fortune and to fame unknown. Gray secured both fame and fortune. He was
so successful that he declined the Laureateship, and had the felicity to
die of gout. Gray's immortality is based upon the fact that his life
gave the lie to his logic. The man who thinks out what he wants to do,
and then works and works hard, will win, and no others do, or ever have,
or can--God will not have it so.

* * * * *

As a violinist Paganini far surpassed all other players who ever lived;
and when one follows the story of his life, the fact is apparent that he
succeeded because he worked.

And yet behold the paradox! The idea existed in his own day, and is
abroad yet, that "the devil guided his hand," for the thought that the
devil is more powerful than God has ever been held by the majority of
men--more especially if a fiddle is concerned.

Such patience, such persistency, such painstaking effort as the man put
forth for a score of years would have made him master at anything. The
public knows nothing of these long years of labor and preparation--it
sees only the result, and this result shows such consummate ease and
naturalness--all done without effort--that it exclaims, "A genius--the
devil guides his hand!" The remark was made of Titian and his wonderful
color effects, and then again of Rembrandt with his mysterious limpid
shadows--their competitors could not understand it! And so they disposed
of the subject by attributing it to a supernatural a