ems that if a soul is born with the endowment of genius, the psychical
offices of country life will carry those native qualities to their
highest power. Many a city child has been born with the light of genius
in its eyes and has had this fire smothered out in the close air and
wild rush of the metropolis. But the woods still face the window where
Bryant looked out into their mysterious depths, and the brook still
sings its way down from the mountains and past the farm where he spent
his early years. To him the Berkshire groves were God's chosen temples,
first and last.

It is because of this that the poetic writers of the present day and
hour should find a sympathetic hearing in the country realm even when
the turmoil and drive of the metropolis are deaf to their music. If our
living poets may have the people of the countryside for their great and
widespread audience they need ask no greater joy.

Mr. Vachel Lindsay, a wandering poet who has traveled almost all over
this country preaching his Gospel of Beauty and Democracy, says that in
almost every ranch-house "is born one flower-girl or boy, a stranger
among the brothers and sisters," a "fairy changeling." The land, he
says, is being "jeweled with talented children," from Maine to
California. These children of to-day, though they may not be adapted to
the strain of heavy labor, yet they will be infinitely patient with the
violin, or chisel, or brush, or pen. Country people should be on the
watch for those rare wonder children who will be the poets of the
future. One of these may seem at the beginning like a simply unusual
child. Afterward it may be seen that what was thought queer or
different, may have been higher or supreme. We may not have been
ourselves sufficiently attuned to the supreme in human accomplishment to
recognize the elements in their beginning. Great genius is not "to
madness near allied," but is the sanest and most normal thing in the
whole realm of creation. The extension of human powers in the field of
what we call "genius" is what makes the benefactor of the race in any
field most successful and the reformer most influential.

Moreover, every child has the right to find forces in his world that
will make his powers, however great or however small, grow to the full
measure of which he is capable. If one has a little ability in the field
of any one among the arts, he has a right to experience the joy and the
benefit that as much training as he is