know the possibilities of life, they lack the sense of its
preciousness and sacredness. And they seek and seek--and go astray!
Take drunkenness, for instance; that brings them joy, but it's a
false scent, it leads them over a precipice. I've been down at the
bottom of it--you know why I have to go there, and what I've seen.
And that is where the best of men's faculties go--yes, it's
literally true! The men who are dull and plodding, they are
contented; it's the men who are adventurous and aspiring who come to
that precipice. I walk down an avenue and see the lines of saloons
with their gleaming lights, and that thought is like a scream of
anguish in my soul; there came a phrase to me once, that I wanted to
cry out to people--'the graveyards of your genius! the graveyards
of your genius!'"

Corydon was gazing at his uplifted face. She said, "That is how
Jesus must have felt, when he wept over Jerusalem."

"Yes," said Thyrsis. "It is a new religion trying to be born. Only
nowadays they don't persecute you, they just ignore you. They don't
hang you up on a cross and make you conspicuous and picturesque--
they ridicule you and let you starve. And that is what I face, you
see. I've saved a hundred dollars--just barely enough to buy me food
until I've written the book!"

"And other people have so much!" cried Corydon.

"So much--and no idea what to do with it. They just fling it away,
in a drunken frenzy. And down below are the poor, who slave to make
civilization possible. Such lives as they have to live--I can't ever
get the thought out of my mind, not in any happiest moment! I feel