Page:Oregon Literature by Horner.djvu/67

Rh as well as physical organization and development, that we incline to the belief that poetic talents no more than those which enrich the fields of science, literature and art should contain an inherent tendency to render their possessor unhappy. All pioneers, in whatever line of thought or action their labors may lie, must feel at times a sense of loneliness and isolation, akin to that felt by one who has been selected for his peculiar fitness to go into a strange land to mark the way for the coming multitude. We cannot but imagine that though his journey by day and his campfires by night do not bring him the pleasure of social companionship, he has abundant joy and the keenest delight in the thought that ere long a joyous crowd shall come along his path hailing with pleasure the landmarks he has made for guidance in their journey through a beautiful and virgin land. May not the bright blaze of his campfire reveal a face beaming with pleasure and fall upon a breast swelling with pride as he reflects that he has marked a way over the sunniest slope and greenest meadows, and left hints where the multitude when weary may rest and refresh themselves in the most enchanting vales beside rippling streams? But it maybe readily understood it is a source of unhappiness for one to feel the possession of talents whose cultivation is calculated to benefit mankind and leave an enduring name, and yet to be so environed by circumstances as to render such cultivation impos-