No man, however, could look in the refined face of Walter Colman and
imagine him cherishing sordid views of life. Asked what of all things he
most admired, he might truly answer, "The imaginative intellect." He was
a fledgling poet. He worshiped what he called thoughts, would rave about
a thought in the abstract, apostrophize an uncaught idea. When a
concrete thinkable one fell to him, he was jubilant over the isolate
thing, and with his joy value had nothing to do. He would stand wrapped
in the delight of what he counted its beauty, and yet more in the
delight that his was the mind that had generated such a meteor! To be
able to think pretty things was to him a gigantic distinction! A thought
that could never be soul to any action, would be more valuable to him
than the perception of some vitality of relation demanding the activity
of the whole being. He would call thoughts the stars that glorify the
firmament of humanity, but the stars of his firmament were merely
atmospheric--pretty fancies, external likenesses. That the grandest
thing in the world is to be an accepted poet, is the despotic craze of a
vast number of the weak-minded and half-made of both sexes. It feeds
poetic fountains of plentiful yield, but insipid and enfeebling flow,
the mere sweat of weakness under the stimulus of self-admiration.




CHAPTER IV.


A LIVING FORCE.

Walter was the very antipode of the Molly he counted commonplace, one
outside the region of poetry; she had a passion for turning a _think_