Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/76



ONCE knew a dreamer of golden dreams. He was young, handsome, robust and impecunious; and he was betrothed to that fickle, elusive, flirtatious and fascinating creature, Fame. He nursed his genius in a little studio for sevralseveral [sic] years, setting up on a pedestal near his typewriter an image of his Beloved, whom he secretly and openly denounced. He covered her with flowers of his dream at night, and pretended in the open day to be impervious to her wiles and charms. They coquetted and flirted and quarrelledquarreled [sic] for a couple of years, and were, indeed, periodically estranged. Once he turned her away from his door, because she doubted the value of the dowry he offered her. A trinket, she called it, a brummagem!

But who shall evaluate genius? Who, but Genius, is competent to say whether or not it is a fitting dowry for that elusive