He had no more idea of being a
genius than you have! He was a sort of artesian well of a man, and could
not help spouting platitudes, that was all. Besides, he had eyes to see
and ears to hear, and a very Yankee spirit of investigation. It is the
fashion to crack him up like the Bible, both encyclopaedias, that's all!
Every man can see himself in these books, and every man likes a
looking-glass, and that's the whole secret of their success."
"Bertie, you are incorrigible."
"No, I am not; only genuine. I do think there is a good deal in both of
the works in question, but their sublimity I dispute. They are homely,
coarse, commonplace, as birth and death."
There was something that almost froze my blood in the way she said those
last words, lying back upon the sofa with far-off-looking eyes and hands
clasped beneath her head.
"Miriam," she said, after a while, "life is a humbug. I have thought so
for some time."
"Poor child, poor child!"
"Ay, poorer than the poorest, Miriam Harz," and, laying aside my work, I
went to and knelt beside her, and kissed her brow.
"I have no soul to open! I am as empty as a chrysalis-case, that the
butterfly has gone out of to dwell amid sunshine and flowers. Yet I
believe I had one once"--in ineffably mournful accents--"but two men
killed it; and yet, neither intended the blow! O Miriam! I understand at
last what Coleridge meant by his 'life in death.
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