t more than to any editor, writers look to their readers for
support, especially to their unknown correspondents--postal and
psychic. Leonard Merrick has so finely expressed the attitude of many
writers that I cannot forbear giving his words to his "public":

I have thought of you so often and wanted to win a smile
from you; you don't realize how I have longed to meet
you--to listen to you, to have you lift the veil that hides
your mind from me. Sometimes in a crowd I have fancied I
caught a glimpse of you; I can't explain--the poise of the
head, a look in the eyes, there was something that hinted it
was You. And in a whirlwind of an instant it almost seemed
that you would recognize me; but you said no word--you
passed, a secret from me still. To yourself where you are
sitting you are just a charming woman with "a local
habitation and a name"; but to me you are not Miss or Madam,
not M. or N.--you are a Power, and I have sought you by a
name you have not heard--you are my Public. And O my Lady, I
am speaking to you! I feel your presence in my senses,
though you are far away and I can't hear your answer.... It
is as if I had touched your hand across the page.

There are probably more masters by proxy to be found among the world's
mothers than in any other class. The profession of motherhood is such
a creative one, and demands so constant an outgo of unselfish
sympathy, that a mother's technic as silent partner is usually kept in
a highly efficient state. And occasionally a mother of a genius
deserves as much credit for him spiritually as physically. Think of
Frau Goethe, for example.

Many a genius attains a commanding position largely through the happy
chance of meeting many powerful masters by proxy and through his happy
facility for taking and using whatever creativeness these have to
offer. Genius has been short-sightedly defined as "an infinite
capacity for taking pains." Galton more truthfully holds that the
triune factors of genius are industry, enthusiasm, and ability. Now if
we were to insist, as so many do, on making a definition out of a
single one of these factors to the neglect of the others, we should
come perhaps nearer the mark by saying that genius is an infinite
capacity for taking others' pains. But all such definings are absurd.
For the genius absorbs and alchemizes not only the industry of his
silent partners, but als