Page:Terminations (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1895).djvu/90

78 all his belongings to other people to take care of. He accepts favors, loans, sacrifices, with nothing more deterrent than an agony of shame. Fortunately we're a little faithful band, and we do what we can." I held my tongue about the natural children, engendered, to the number of three, in the wantonness of his youth. I only remarked that he did make efforts—often tremendous ones. "But the efforts," I said, "never come to much; the only things that come to much are the abandonments, the surrenders."

"And how much do they come to?"

"You're right to put it as if we had a big bill to pay, but, as I've told you before, your questions are rather terrible. They come, these mere exercises of genius, to a great sum total of poetry, of philosophy, a mighty mass of speculation, of notation. The genius is there, you see, to meet the surrender; but there's no genius to support the defence."

"But what is there, after all, at his age, to show?"

"In the way of achievement recognized and reputation established?" I interrupted. "To 'show' if you will, there isn't much, for his writing, mostly, isn't as fine, isn't certainly as showy, as his talk. Moreover, two-thirds of his work are merely colossal projects and announcements. 'Showing' Frank Saltram is often a poor business; we endeavored, you will have observed, to show him to-night! However, if he had lectured, he would have lectured divinely. It would just have been his talk."