moment when the first drop trickled down its side.

How we all like the spirting up of a fountain, seemingly against the
law that makes water everywhere slide, roll, leap, tumble headlong, to
get as low as the earth will let it! That is genius. But what is this
transient upward movement, which gives us the glitter and the rainbow,
to that unsleeping, all-present force of gravity, the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever, (if the universe be eternal,)--the great outspread
hand of God himself, forcing all things down into their places, and
keeping them there? Such, in smaller proportion, is the force of
character to the fitful movements of genius, as they are or have been
linked to each other in many a household, where one name was historic,
and the other, let, me say the nobler, unknown, save by some faint
reflected ray, borrowed from its lustrous companion.

Oftentimes, as I have lain swinging on the water, in the swell of the
Chelsea ferry-boats, in that long, sharp-pointed, black cradle in which
I love to let the great mother rock me, I have seen a tall ship glide
by against the tide, as if drawn by some invisible tow-line, with a
hundred strong arms pulling it. Her sails hung unfilled, her streamers
were drooping, she had neither side-wheel nor stern-wheel; still she
moved on, stately, in serene triumph, as if with her own life. But I
knew that on the other side of the ship, hidden beneath the great hulk
that swam so majestically, there was a little toiling steam-tug, with
heart of fire and arms of iron, that was hugging it close and dragging
it bravely on; and I knew, that, if the little steam-tug untwined her
arms and left the tall ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift
hither and thither, and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows
whither. And so I have known more than one _genius_, high-decked,
full-freighted, wide-sailed, gay-pennoned, that, but for the bare