“And such a ‘working power,’ you suppose, would, of itself, be a constant self-supply, and always equal to emergencies, and of its own unaided spontaneous inspirations and energies, I suppose,” said Henry, “and has nothing to do but float and plunge about, diving and soaring, in the amplitude of nature?”

“Well, Henry, you can’t get out of a man what isn’t in him.  You need not draw on a water-bottle for nectar, or hope to carve marble columns from empty air; genius can’t do that.  An unformed, undeveloped mind never threw out great things spontaneously, as the cloud throws out lightning.  Men are not great without achievement, nor wise without study and reflection.  Nor was there ever a genius, however strong and brilliant in the rough, that would not have been stronger and more brilliant by cutting,” said Bart, with vehemence.  “All I contend for is, that genius, as I have supposed, can make the most and best of things, often doing with them what other and commoner minds cannot do at all.”

“This is not the school-boy’s idea of genius,” said Ranney.

“And,” said Bart, a little assertively, “I am not a school-boy.”

“So I perceive,” said Ranney, coolly.

“The fault I find with you geniuses—­”

“We geniuses!!—­”

“Is,” said Henry, “you perpetually fly and caracol about, and just because you can, apparently, and for the fun of the thing.”

“Eagles fly,” said Bart.

“And so do butterflies, and other gilded insects.”

“Therefore, flying should be dispensed with, I suppose,” said Bart.  “Because things of mere painted wings, all wing and nothing else, can float in the lower atmosphere, are all winged things to be despised?  Birds of strong flight can light and build on or near the ground, but your barn-yard fowl can hardly soar to the top of the fence for his crow.”

“But your geniuses, Bart, will not work, will not strip to the long, patient, delving drudgery necessary to unravel, separate, analyze, weigh, measure, estimate and count, and come to like work for work’s sake, and so grow to do the best and most work.  They deal a few heavy blows, scatter things, pick up a few glittering pebbles, and—­”

“Leave to dullards the riches of the mines they never would have found,” broke in Bart.

“And fly away into upper air,” pursued Henry.

“Oh, I know that some chaps rise for want of weight, as you would say; but mere weight will keep a man always at the surface.  Your men who are always plunging into things, digging and turning up the earth—­who believe with the ancients that truth is in a well—­often lose themselves, and are smothered in their own dirt-holes, and call on men to see how deep they are.  God coins with His image on the outside, as men mint money, and your deep lookers can’t see it; they are for rushing into the bowels of things.”