toiling arms, and brave, warm, beating heart of the faithful little
wife, that nestled close in his shadow, and clung to him, so that no
wind or wave could part them, and dragged him on against all the tide
of circumstance, would soon have gone down the stream and been heard of
no more.--No, I am too much a lover of genius, I sometimes think, and
too often get impatient with dull people, so that, in their weak talk,
where nothing is taken for granted, I look forward to some future
possible state of development, when a gesture passing between a
beatified human soul and an archangel shall signify as much as the
complete history of a planet, from the time when it curdled to the time
when its sun was burned out. And yet, when a strong brain is weighed
with a true heart, it seems to me like balancing a bubble against a
wedge of gold.

----It takes a very _true_ man to be a fitting companion for a woman of
genius, but not a very great one. I am not sure that she will not
embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a
brilliant pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very
essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are
always ideas behind shows of form or language,) nothing is so
contemptible as falsehood and pretence in its eyes. Now it is not easy
to find a perfectly true woman, and it is very hard to find a perfectly
true man. And a woman of genius, who has the sagacity to choose such a
one as her companion, shows more of the divine gift in so doing than in
her finest talk or her most brilliant work of letters or of art.

I have been a good while coming at a secret, for which I wished to
prepare you before telling it I think there is a kindly feeling growing
up between Iris and our young Marylander. Not that I suppose there is
any distinct understanding between them, but that the affinity which