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318 request that he would come home with me and dine. "That was to have contained my masterpiece! Is n't it a promising foundation? The elements of it are all here." And he tapped his forehead with that mystic confidence which had marked the gesture before. "If I could only transpose them into some brain that had the hand, the will! Since I've been sitting here taking stock of my intellects, I 've come to believe that I have the material for a hundred masterpieces. But my hand is paralyzed now, and they 'll never be painted. I never began! I waited and waited to be worthier to begin, and wasted my life in preparation. While I fancied my creation was growing, it was dying. I 've taken it all too hard! Michael Angelo did n't when he went at the Lorenzo! He did his best at a venture, and his venture is immortal. That's mine!" And he pointed with a gesture I shall never forget at the empty canvas. "I suppose we're a genus by ourselves in the providential scheme,—we talents that can't act, that can't do nor dare! We take it out in talk, in plans and promises, in study, in visions! But our visions, let me tell you," he cried, with a toss of his head, "have a way of being brilliant, and a man has n't lived in vain who has seen the things I have! Of course you 'll not believe in them when that bit of worm-eaten cloth is all I have to show for them; but to convince