Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/266

 had occasion to listen to Roderick's flights of eloquence, with a number of mental restrictions. Both in gravity and in gaiety he said more than he meant, and you did him simple justice if you privately concluded that neither the glow of purpose nor the chill of despair was of so intense a strain as his gift for expression implied. The moods of an artist, his exaltations and depressions, Rowland had often said to himself, were like the pen-flourishes a writing-master makes in the air when he begins to set his copy. He may bespatter you with ink, he may hit you in the eye, but he writes a magnificent hand. It was nevertheless true that at present poor Roderick showed grave symptoms of a general breakage of his springs. As to genius held or not held on the precarious tenure he had sketched, Rowland had to confess himself too much of an outsider to argue. He secretly but heavily sighed; he wished his companion had had a trifle more of little Sam Singleton's pedestrian patience. But then was Sam Singleton a man of genius? He answered that such questions struck him as idle, even inane; that the proof of the pudding was in the eating; that he knew nothing about bringing dead things back to life again, but that you might sometimes pull a man out of bed who would n't get up. "Don't worry about your mood," he prosaically pleaded, "and don't believe there 's any calm so utter that your own lungs can't ruffle it with a breeze. If you've pressing business to attend to don't wait to settle the name and work out the pedigree of the agent you despatch on it: tumble to work somehow and see what it looks like afterwards." 232