Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/396

 MARK TWAIN

gift of eloquence, the advocate s gift of presenting a case in clear and compact form, the judge s gift of sorting and weighing evidence, and finally, some thing recognizable as more than a mere trace of the statesman s gift of understanding a political situation and how to make profitable use of such opportunities as it offers; we can comprehend how she could be born with these great qualities, but we cannot com prehend how they became immediately usable and effective without the developing forces of a sympa thetic atmosphere and the training which comes of teaching, study, practice years of practice and the crowning and perfecting help of a thousand mistakes. We can understand how the possibilities of the future perfect peach are all lying hid in the humble bitter-almond, but we cannot conceive of the peach springing directly from the almond without the in tervening long seasons of patient cultivation and development. Out of a cattle-pasturing peasant village lost in the remotenesses of an unvisited wil derness and atrophied with ages of stupefaction and ignorance we cannot see a Joan of Arc issue equipped to the last detail for her amazing career and hope to be able to explain the riddle of it, labor at it as we may.

It is beyond us. All the rules fail in this girl s case. In the world s history she stands alone quite alone. Others have been great in their first public exhibitions of generalship, valor, legal talent, diplo macy, fortitude; but always their previous years and associations had been in a larger or smaller degree a preparation for these things. There have been no

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