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- 11696
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- distinguished favor of being permitted to have it for a brooch; and
ousted a cameo-head of Homer, to replace it with the more invaluable
gem. He became inconsolable, when being caught in a rain, the dot
(_tear_) disappeared from over the _i_ (_eye_); so that the strangeness
and wonderfulness of the sonnet was still conspicuous; in that though
the least fragment of it could weep in a drought, yet did it become all
tearless in a shower.
But this indifferent and supercilious amateur--deaf to the admiration of
the world; the enigmatically merry and renowned author of "The Tear;"
the pride of the Gazelle Magazine, on whose flaunting cover his name
figured at the head of all contributors--(no small men either; for their
lives had all been fraternally written by each other, and they had
clubbed, and had their likenesses all taken by the aggregate job, and
published on paper, all bought at one shop) this high-prestiged
Pierre--whose future popularity and voluminousness had become so
startlingly announced by what he had already written, that certain
speculators came to the Meadows to survey its water-power, if any, with
a view to start a paper-mill expressly for the great author, and so
monopolize his stationery dealings;--this vast being,--spoken of with
awe by all merely youthful aspirants for fame; this age-neutralizing
Pierre;--before whom an old gentleman of sixty-five, formerly librarian
to Congress, on being introduced to him at the Magazine publishers',
devoutly took off his hat, and kept it so, and remained standing, though
Pierre was socially seated with his hat on;--this wonderful, disdainful
genius--but only life-amateur as yet--is now soon to appear in a far
different guise. He shall now learn, and very bitterly learn, that
though the world worship Mediocrity and Common Place, yet hath it fire
and sword for all cotemporary Grandeur; that though it swears that it
fiercely assails all Hypocrisy, yet hath it not always an ear for
Earnestness.
And though this state of things, united with the ever multiplying
freshets of new books, seems inevitably to point to a coming time, when
the mass of humanity reduced to one level of dotage, authors shall be
scarce as alchymists are to-day, and the printing-press be reckoned a
small invention:--yet even now, in the foretaste of this let us hug
ourselves, oh, my Aurelian! that though the age of authors be passing,
the hours of earnestness shall remain!
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