Let her alone! She knows what she is about. Genius has an infinitely
deeper reverence for character than character can have for genius. To be
sure, genius gets the world's praise, because its work is a tangible
product, to be bought, or had for nothing. It bribes the common voice to
praise it by presents of speeches, poems, statues, pictures, or whatever
it can please with. Character evolves its best products for home
consumption; but, mind you, it takes a deal more to feed a family for
thirty years than to make a holiday feast for our neighbors once or twice
in our lives. You talk of the fire of genius. Many a blessed woman, who
dies unsung and unremembered, has given out more of the real vital heat
that keeps the life in human souls, without a spark flitting through her
humble chimney to tell the world about it, than would set a dozen
theories smoking, or a hundred odes simmering, in the brains of so many
men of genius. It is in latent caloric, if I may borrow a philosophical
expression, that many of the noblest hearts give out the life that warms
them.
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