“Yes,” whispered Corydon, deeply moved, “I see.”
“Look,” he went on--“see all the vice and misery in the world--the cruelty and greed and hate. And see all the stupid and petty things, the narrow motives, the vanities and the jealousies! And all that is because people haven’t this thing that has come to me; they don’t 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 as if I were a man who had escaped from a beleaguered city, and it all depended upon me to carry the tidings and bring relief. I’m their one hope, and if I fail them I’m a traitor, an accursed being! They are ignorant and helpless, and their cry comes to me like some great storm-wind of grief and despair. Oh, some day I mean to utter words that will reach them--I can’t fail! I can’t fail!”