Читать книгу The Secret Life - Elizabeth Bisland - Страница 14

Who, I wonder, was the stupid phrase-maker guilty of saying that Genius was only an infinite capacity for taking pains? And yet Shakespeare, according to tradition, never blotted a line. How much pains had the little Mozart taken when he began his first concert tour? Creation comes swiftly and with heat. The man who must take infinite pains in production is never a genius. Indeed, when one sees how little the creation of beauty, harmony, or ideas is related to their human creator, how little, in a way, he seems related to them, one is almost inclined to imagine that somewhere there exists a great reservoir of force and that the "genius" is merely a cock through which the creative fluid runs. He happens to be the cock that is "turned on" while the handles of the others are left untouched.

There was once a very ambitious and industrious Ant. Its home was in a field where the grass and flowers bloomed.

This Ant had convictions as to the best uses of life, and wasted no time. So many hours a day she devoted to the improvement of her mind, and so many to her life labour, which was to build an ant-hill. Early and late she toiled, and as she toiled she thought very deeply, elaborating numerous excellent and noble theories. All her theories concerned the best use of opportunities, and the doing of some work which should make the world better because she had existed.

Once in a long while, when quite worn out by her labours, she would climb to the top of a blade of grass, and look out into the world. Sometimes the sun was just rising and the field was damascened with the blue and white cups of morning-glories, and sometimes it was evening and the moon silvered the dew-hung grass, which palpitated with fireflies. At such times a divine yearning and great longing filled the heart of the tired little emmet, and she would hurry down to her work at once, saying bravely to herself:

"If I waste a moment my hill will never be high enough to look out upon this beautiful world." And so would toil on without ceasing, taking the greatest pains with every grain of sand, fitting and refitting it into its place with infinite pains, and comforting herself for her slow progress by saying:

"I am really not very old yet. I still have a great many days in which to complete my work." And would make some excuse to herself for going down to stand on the ground beside it and gain encouragement by noting how much greater was the hill than her own stature, and then went happily back to her task.

Near the Ant's hill a lark had built its home – a careless body, who roughly kicked out the earth for a nest, and who, being dull as she sat on her eggs, conversed at times with the Ant, for whom the matron manifested an ill-concealed contempt.

"In heaven's name!" she said, "What is the use of wearing yourself to skin and bone working on that hill? Isn't it quite big enough for your uses already?"

"Yes," replied the Ant, patiently, "but it is every one's duty to make the world as beautiful as they can, and I want to build the biggest and most beautiful ant-hill in the world. And oh!" – she cried, clasping her little paws and with a hungry look in her eyes – "I do so want to be famous!"

"Fiddle-de-dee!" answered the brown bird, contemptuously. "Famous! – what is that? Are you wearing yourself out for such nonsense? As for me, give me a fat worm for breakfast and luck with my eggs, and it's all I ask." Saying which, she tucked her head under her wing and went to sleep, while the Ant hurried away to finish the daily task she set herself.

In course of time a young lark was hatched. A great red, sprawling, featherless thing, with a big bill and no idea but worms. The Ant used to try sometimes, when his mother was absent hunting food, to teach the ugly young thing some of her own excellent theories, but the bird only blinked sleepily and scornfully and never answered a word, so the Ant was reluctantly obliged to give up the hope of ever inspiring him with the nobler ambitions of life.

She was growing much encouraged about her own work. All the other ants in the field wondered at and admired it, and as one could nearly see out above the grasses by standing upon her hill on tiptoe, the happy insect began to dream of immortality.

By this time, too, the young lark had grown feathers, and one morning he stumbled out of the nest, fluttered a moment to try his wings, and suddenly, bursting into a flood of song, soared upward into the sunlit blue.

The Ant fell to the earth, breathless and paralyzed, but in a moment, stifling her pain and despair, she rose up and began, from mere habit, fitting more grains of sand into her unfinished hill.

A Poet walked in the field that day, meditating some verses upon the divine gift of genius. He cried aloud with joy at the lark's song, and while he gazed upward stumbled over the Ant's hill and demolished it, but in his note-book he wrote:

"Oh, miracle of Genius, that lifts the Sons of God on golden pinions to the gates of heaven, while the dull myriads toil futilely at Babels below."