The Diving Bell | Page 6

to himself.
Your old friend Uncle Frank once set himself up for a genius. Don't
laugh--pray, don't laugh. I was young then, and as green as a juvenile
gosling. Age has branded into me a great many truths, which, somehow
or other, were very slow in finding their way to my young mind. The
notion that I am a genius does not haunt me now, and a great many
years have passed since such a vision flitted across my imagination.
But I will tell you how I was cooled off, once on a time, when I got into
a raging fever of authorship, and was burning up with a desire to make

an impression on the world. I had written some verses--written them
with great care, and with ever so many additions, subtractions, and
divisions. They were perfect, at last--that is, I could not make them any
more perfect--and off they were posted to the editor of the village
newspaper. I declare I don't remember what they were about. But I dare
say, they were "Lines" to somebody, or "Stanzas" to something; and I
remember they were signed "Theodore Thinker," in a very large, and as
I then thought, a very fair hand.
"Well, did the editor print them, Uncle Frank?"
Hold on, my dear fellow. You are quite too fast. As I said, when the
lines to somebody or something were sent to the editor, I was in a
perfect fever. I could hardly wait for Wednesday to come, the day on
which the paper was to be issued--the paper which was to be the
medium of the first acquaintance of my muse with "a discerning
public."
"Well, how did you feel when the lines were printed?"
When they were printed! Alas, for my fame! they were not printed at
all. The editor rejected them. "Theodore's lines," said he--the great
clown! what did he know about poetry?--"Theodore's lines have gone
to the shades. They possessed some merit,"--some merit! that's all he
knows about poetry; the brute!--"but not enough to entitle them to a
place. Still, whenever age and experience have sufficiently developed
his genius,"--mark the smooth and oily manner in which the savage
knocks a poor fellow down, and treads on his neck--"whenever age and
experience have sufficiently developed his genius, we shall be happy to
hear from him again."
If you can fancy how a man feels, when he is taken from an oven,
pretty nearly hot enough to bake corn bread, and plunged into a very
cold bath, indeed--say about forty degrees Fahrenheit--you can form
some idea of my feelings when I read that paragraph in the editorial
column, under the notice "To correspondents."
I am inclined to think there are a great many little folks climbing up the

stairs of the stage of life, who verily believe that genius has got them
by the hand, leading them along, but who, in fact, are not a little
mistaken. It is rather important that one should know whether he has
any genius or not; and if he has, in what particular direction he will be
likely to distinguish himself.
I don't believe in the old-fashioned notion that people all come into the
world with minds and tastes so unlike, that, if you educate one ever so
carefully, he never will make a poet, or a painter, or a musician, as the
case may be; while the other will be a master in one of these branches,
with scarcely any instruction. But I do believe there is a great
difference in natural capacities for a particular art; and that some
persons learn that art easily, while others learn it with difficulty, and
could, perhaps, never excel in it, if they should drive at it for a
life-time.
Ralph Waldo, a boy who lived near our house, when I was a child, was
the sport of all the neighborhood, on account of the high estimate in
which he held his talent at drawing pictures. Now it so happened that
Ralph's pictures, to say the least, were rather poor specimens of the art.
Some of them, according to the best of my recollection, would never
have suggested the particular animal or thing for which they were made,
if they had not been labeled, or if Ralph had not called them by name.
Such dogs and cats, such horses and cows, such houses and trees, such
men and women, were never seen since the world began, as those
which figured on his slate. And yet he thought a great deal of his
pictures. How happy it used to make him, when some of the boys in the
neighborhood, perhaps purely out of sport, would say, "Come, Ralph,
let's see you make a horse now." With what zeal he used to set himself
about the