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Talent is Overrated 1st Edition Geoffrey Colvin Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Geoffrey Colvin
ISBN(s): 9781591842248, 1591842247
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 22.76 MB
Year: 2008
Language: english
 Then the researchers interviewed the students and their parents at
length. How much did the kids practice? At what age could they first
sing a recognizable tune? And so on. Fortunately for the researchers, the
British educational system gave them an independent means of assessing
these students beyond the five ability groups used. A national system of
grading young instrumentalists is rigorous and uniform; the great
majority of kids studying instruments take graded exams that are
formulated and conducted by a national panel of assessors, who then
place each student into one of nine grades.

This setup let the researchers check their results two ways as they tried
to figure out what accounted for the wide difference in musical ability
and achievement among their 257 subjects.

The results were clear. The telltale signs of precocious musical ability
in the top-performing groups—the evidence of talent that we all know
exists—simply weren’t there. On the contrary, judged by early signs of
special talent, all the groups were highly similar. The top group, the
students at music school, were superior on one measure of early
ability—the ability to repeat a tune; they could do that at the age of
eighteen months, on average, versus about twenty-four months for the
others. But it’s hard to regard even that as evidence of special talent,
because the interviews revealed that the parents of these kids were far
more active in singing to them than other parents were. On several other
dimensions the various groups of students showed no significant
differences; they all started studying their main instrument around age
eight, for example.

Still, the students obviously differed dramatically in their musical

accomplishments, and even if extensive interviewing turned up no
evidence of particular talent, weren’t the differing levels of achievement
in themselves evidence of talent? What else could it be? As it happens,
the study produced an answer to that question. One factor, and only one
factor, predicted how musically accomplished the students were, and that
was how much they practiced.
profits to buy forty acres of farmland, which he rented to farmers. He
was also known as a kid who could add large numbers in his head, and
he graduated from high school at sixteen. Later, in graduate school at
Columbia, he studied under the famous investing authority Benjamin
Graham and received the only A+ that Graham ever awarded.

Buffett’s achievements as an investor are world famous, and his story

makes it easy to understand why he and many others would say he was
born to do what he did. But that explanation—an inborn ability to
allocate capital—is not the only way or even the easiest way to account
for his success. Buffett’s early obsessive interest in money seems
unsurprising in someone growing up in the Midwest in the Depression.
Similarly, his fascination with stocks and investing is not especially
intriguing when one considers that his father was a stockbroker and
investor whom young Warren adored. Warren went to work in his
father’s office at age eleven and thus began learning about investing at a
very early age. Yet there’s little if any evidence that, even into his early
twenties, he was especially good at it. For a while in his teens he was an
enthusiastic “chartist,” trying to predict the movements of stock prices
by studying charts of past movements; research has shown this technique
to be worthless as a way to beat the market (though, like many
ineffective techniques, it still has believers). Later he tried to be a market
timer, choosing the perfect moments to get into and out of stocks; this
strategy also is a guaranteed loser over time, and Buffett couldn’t make it
work.

When Buffett graduated from Columbia Business School, he was such

a devotee of his professor, Graham, that he volunteered to work for
Graham’s investment company for free. But, as Buffett tells the story,
“Ben made his customary calculation of value to price and said no.”
Buffett did go to work for Graham’s firm a couple of years later, staying
for two years, and then went back to Omaha to start his first investment
partnership at age twenty-five.

So at this point we have a picture of a young man who had shown

Other documents randomly have
different content
opened the door. Vroom stood there facing me, a revolver in his
hand.
“You did not consider,” he said calmly, “that my left eye also is
sympathetic; that I have followed every movement of yours; that I am
acquainted with your errand through the entries in your diary, which I
read line by line as you wrote. You shall not see her. I have sent her
far away.”
I rushed upon him in a frenzy. His revolver clicked but missed fire.
I bore him backward over a divan, my hands at his throat. His eyes
grew big as I strangled him. And into my left eye came a vision of my
own face, as Vroom saw it, distorted by the lust of murder. He died
with that picture fixed in his own eye, and upon the retina of the eye
that once was his, and is now mine, that fearful picture of my face
was fixed, to remain until my death.
I wear a black patch over my left eye. I dare not look upon the
horror that it hides.
 A SHIPBOARD ROMANCE
By Lewis Allen

“Isn’t that young Griggs and Miss Deering?” asked the captain,
peering down from the bridge at a dark spot silhouetted against the
moonlit sea.
“Yes, sir,” replied the second officer.
“It’s the speediest shipboard romance I’ve ever seen in all my
thirty years aboard a liner,” remarked the captain, smiling.
“I understand they never saw or heard of each other until they met
at dinner, Tuesday. Have you talked much with them, sir? I see they
sit next you at table.”
“Oh, yes, that’s true. Why, on the second dinner out he
complained because there was no jewellery shop aboard. She
looked as happy as a kid with a lollypop, and blushed.”
“Whew! Engaged within forty-eight hours! Going some! I suppose
they’ll be married by the American consul before they’ve been
ashore an hour.”
“Not a bit of doubt of it,” grinned the captain. “True love at sight in
this case, all right. Well, they have my blessings. I fell in love with my
Missus the same way, but we waited three months. I’ll go below.
What’s she making?”
“Nineteen, sir. Good-night.”
· · · · · · ·
Two hours later there came a terrific explosion away down in the
hold amongst the cargo. The ship trembled and listed.
“Women and children first! No danger! Time enough for all!”
shouted the officers, as the frantic passengers surged about the life-
boats.
 She was going down rapidly by her stern. There came another
explosion, this from the boilers.
“All women and children off?” bellowed the captain.
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the second officer.
“Married men next!” shouted the captain as the men began
scrambling into the boats. A score of men paused, bowed, and
stepped back. Young Griggs tore his way through and started to
clamber into the boat.
“Damn you, for a coward!” cursed the second officer, dragging him
back.
Young Griggs yanked away and again clutched at the boat. This
time the second officer struck him square in the face and he went
down.
The boatload of married men was merely cut away, so low was
the ship in the water. Then came a lurch, and the waves closed over
the great ship.
· · · · · · ·
The next evening the Associated Press sent out, from its St. Louis
office, this paragraph:
“Among those lost was H. G. Griggs, junior partner of the Wells &
Griggs Steel Co. He leaves a wife and infant son in this city. It is
feared Mrs. Griggs will not recover from the shock.”
 THE COWARD
By Philip Francis Cook

Johnson stopped at the edge of the clearing and looked carefully

at the hut. A few yards back, where the spring crossed the trail, there
were tracks of a woman’s shoe-pack. It was country where one didn’t
live long without the habit of noticing things. The tracks were light,
mostly toes, and far apart for so small a foot. Johnson knew no
woman travelled north so fast, into the wilderness, and without a
pack, at that, for diversion, so he had sidestepped from the trail,
silently slipped off his tump-line, and circled to the edge of the
clearing, about a dozen yards from where the trail struck it. There in
the shadow of the pines he searched the clearing with his eyes. No
sign of life.
The door of the hut was shut, but a couple of boards had been
knocked off one of the window openings. The tall grass was
trampled toward the spring. Over to the right was a wreck of a birch,
where some one had been cutting firewood. Nothing especially
alarming, but Johnson was not popular and a few early experiences
had made him cautious. He stood there, silent, for perhaps fifteen
minutes, before he started for the door. There was still no sound, and
he stepped inside, gun in hand.
A rusty little yacht stove, a few shelves, and a rude table were all
the cookroom contained. Beyond was the bunkroom with a large
double-decked bunk against one wall, and opposite it the window.
Johnson went on in.
In the lower bunk lay the body of a man with a hunting knife
sticking in his breast. He lay staring at the ceiling with a rather silly
smile, as though he had been grinning, and death had come too
quickly for it to fade.
“MacNamara—— My God!”
 Johnson was unnerved. It was not often that men die by the knife
in the North country. Then a great load seemed to leave his
shoulders, for this dead man had sworn, not three weeks before, to
shoot him at sight—and Johnson was known to be a coward. No
more need he sleep with an eye open, or slip into towns at night.
MacNamara, thank God, was dead.
The dead man’s pack was in the other bunk, and scattered around
the room were hairpins, a small rhinestone ring, and a few other
feminine trinkets. “Woman!” said Johnson—and then he saw the
note. It was scrawled on the cover torn from an old magazine. It
read:

“Ed, you’ll find this sure. Mac was going to lay for you and pot you
at the White Rocks. I couldn’t find you, so I promised to come here to
Carmels with him. When he climbed in the bunk I give it to him—the
damned fool!”

It was unsigned.
The sun was very near the western hilltop. Johnson went to the
woods and returned with his pack; he dropped it near the stove in
the cookroom. Then he burned the note. Next he took a small bag of
parched corn out of his pack and concealed in it the woman’s little
things, and put the bag in his shirt. There remained only one thing to
do. Without looking at the dead man’s face he drew the knife out of
his breast and forced his own into the wound. The woman’s knife he
took to the door and hurled far out into the woods.
There wasn’t much daylight left. He closed the door quietly and
started for the trail, north.
“I’ll have to hurry,” said Johnson.
 THE HEART OF A BURGLAR
By Jane Dahl

Noiselessly the burglar drew his great bulk through the window,
deposited his kit of tools on the floor, and lowered the sash behind
him. Then he stopped to listen. No sound broke the midnight
stillness. Stealthily he flashed his lantern around the room in search
of objects of value. His quick ear caught the sound of a door opening
and hurried footsteps in the upper hall. Instantly he adjusted a black
mask and sprang behind an open door. Pistol in hand, every faculty
alert, he waited. He heard the soft thud of bare feet on the padded
stairs, then laboured breathing nearby.
As the electric light was switched on, brilliantly illuminating the
room, he gripped his revolver and stepped from behind the door.
“Hands up!” he cried in a hoarse whisper. Then he fell back with a
short, raucous laugh. He was pointing the revolver at a frightened
little mite of a girl shivering before him in her thin, white nightgown.
The small, terrified face touched him strangely, and, placing his pistol
in his pocket, he said, not unkindly:
“There, little girl, don’t be so scared—I’m not going to hurt you.
Just you be real still so as not to disturb the others until I get through
and get away, and you shan’t be hurt.”
The child looked at him much as she would an obstacle in her
path, and attempted to rush past him. He grabbed her and held her
tight.
“You little vixen!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t I tell you to keep still?”
“But I’ve got to telephone,” gasped the child, struggling to free
herself. “Just let me telephone and then you can do what you like
with me—but I can’t wait—I’ve got to telephone right away.” And she
made another effort to reach the telephone on the wall.
 Again the burglar laughed. “It’s very likely I’ll let you telephone for
the police. No, missy, you can’t work that on me. I guess I’ll have to
tie and gag you after all.”
Fresh terror found its way into the child’s face, and, for the first
time the burglar realized that he was not the cause of it. She was not
afraid of him. She fought and scratched him like a young tigress,
striving to free herself, and when she realized how powerless she
was in his strong arms she burst into tears.
“Oh! My brother is dying,” she cried, “and I want to telephone the
doctor. He has convulsions and mamma doesn’t know what to do—
and you won’t let me telephone the doctor!”
At the word “convulsions” the burglar went white—his hands fell
nervelessly to his sides—the child was free.
“Call the doctor, quick,” he said, placing the child on the chair in
front of the telephone. “What room are they in?”
“End of the hall, upstairs,” responded the child, with the receiver
already off the hook.
In three bounds the burglar was up the steps. He made for the
light which shone through a half-open door down the hall, striving to
formulate some explanation to offer the mother for his presence in
the house. When he gently pushed open the door he saw that none
was needed—the woman before him was oblivious to all the world.
Dishevelled and distracted, she sat rocking to and fro, clutching to
her breast the twitching body of a wee boy. Piteously she begged
him not to die—not to leave his poor mummy.
Quietly the burglar came to her side and gently loosened her
clasp.
“Give me the baby,” he said in a low voice. “He will be better on
the bed.”
Dumbly, with unseeing eyes, she looked at him, and surrendered
the child.
“He is dying,” she moaned—“dying—oh, my little, little man!”
“No, he’s not,” said the burglar. But as he looked at the wide-open,
glassy eyes and blue, pinched face of the child he had little faith in
his own words.
 He placed the baby upon the bed, and turning to the mother, said
in an authoritative voice:
“You must brace up now and save your child—do you
understand? I can save him, but you must help me, and we must be
quick—quick, do you understand?”
A glimmer of comprehension seemed to penetrate her palsied
brain.
“Yes, yes!” she said. “What shall I do?”
“Heat a kettle of water, quick. Bring it in his bathtub—and bring
some mustard, too. Hurry.”
Impatiently the mother was off before the last “hurry” was hurled at
her. Now that a ray of hope was offered, and something definite to
do, she was all action.
Reverently the burglar removed the baby’s nightrobe, and,
covering the little body with a blanket, he rubbed the legs and arms
and back with his huge hands—very, very gently, for fear their
roughness would irritate the delicate skin.
In a short time the mother was back with the hot mustard bath.
Together they placed the baby in the tub. His little body relaxed—the
glassy eyes closed—he breathed regularly—he was asleep.
“Thank God,” breathed the burglar, fervently, though awkwardly,
as though such words were strange to his lips.
“He is sleeping,” cried the mother rapturously. “He will live!”
As the mother was drying the little body with soft towels the
burglar said brokenly:
“I had a little boy once—about his size—two years old. He died in
convulsions because his mother didn’t know what to do and the
doctor didn’t get there in time.”
A sob of ready sympathy came from the heart of the woman.
“And his poor mother?” she asked. “Where is she?”
“She soon followed—she seemed to think the little fellow would
need her over there,” he replied in a tear-choked voice.
Half ashamed, he ran his sleeve across his eyes to remove the
moisture there. The woman’s tears splashed on the quietly sleeping
infant in her lap.
Both were startled by the clamorous ringing of the doorbell.
 “The doctor!” cried the man, suddenly brought to a realization of
his position.
The woman looked at him, and for the first time she really saw
him; for the first time the strangeness of an unknown man in the
house in the middle of the night was apparent to her. From his face
her glance wandered to the chair where the burglar had thrown his
mask and tools.
“Yes,” he said, answering her look, “I’m a burglar. I heard your
husband was out of town, and I came to rob you. You can call the
police, now.”
“No,” the woman interrupted. “Go into the next room and wait until
the doctor leaves. I want to help you to a better way of living than
this, if I can.”
After the doctor had departed the woman went into the next room.
The burglar was not there. Going downstairs she found the drawers
ransacked and all her valuables gone. On the table was a scrap of
paper. On it was written:

“Thank you, madam, for your offer, but I’m used to this life now
and don’t want to change.”

The woman thought of the sleeping baby upstairs, and a tender

smile came to her lips. That robbery was not reported to the police.
 THE REWARD
By Herbert Heron

No one knew just how popular Cobbe was till Dick Walling shot
him. It was Cobbe’s fault, but Walling didn’t wait to explain. Like
others, he didn’t know the degree of the deceased’s popularity but
he had a fair idea, and left Monterey as fast as his horse could take
him. The animal was the speediest in the county.
He stopped at Parl’s on his way up the valley. Parl greeted him
cordially. For half an hour they talked. The ’phone rang.
“That’s for me. I told Cobbe I’d stop here,” and with that Walling
took down the receiver.
“Hello! This Mr. Parl’s. Oh, yes, you want me. What? Well, I’m
damned! Not a sign. I’ll watch. Sure. What? How much? Whew!” He
ended in a long whistle, and hung up.
“I’ll be sliding along now.” He shook hands, mounted, and rode
toward Monterey till Parl shut the door. Then he circled, and went on
up the valley. A thousand dollars reward, dead or alive! He knew
now how popular Cobbe was.
They hadn’t even waited till the sheriff had failed to get him.
There are few ranches above Parl’s, and these have no
telephones, so he rode by, unconcerned. Toward midnight he came
to a place owned by a girl and her brother. He had loved the girl, but
decided that she didn’t care for him. The brother liked him, though,
and he could get some food for his stay in the mountains till things
quieted down and he could leave the country.
The brother came to the door, pale and troubled. “He can’t have
heard——” The thought was dispelled by the sudden relief on the
boy’s face.
“Thank God, it’s you, Dick! Mary’s dying, and——” Walling
followed him into the room where the girl lay, high in fever. “I couldn’t
leave her alone, to get the doctor, but now you can go——”
Something in Walling’s manner stopped him. “I’ll go, and you can
stay with her. Are you on Firefly? I’ll take him. It’ll be quicker.” Before
Walling could think what to say, the boy was gone. He went to call
him back. The girl moaned. What could he do? He couldn’t refuse
this duty fallen on him from the sky, even if the girl were a stranger;
and this was the woman he loved, ... but she was dying.
“Dick!... Oh, Dick!... Dick!...” The voice from the bed startled him.
He went softly over to see what she wanted. In her eyes there was
no recognition: she had spoken in delirium.
She loved him! But the rush of joy was swept away by the sight of
her suffering. He bathed her face and hands. By and by the fever
seemed less. She passed into a light sleep.
He made some coffee. While he drank it he had time to think of
himself. When the doctor came from Monterey.... The doctor would
know, and....
“I must clear out when I hear them coming.” Then another thought
forced its way in: “Go now, while you’ve still a good lead. Go now!”
He went to the stable, saddled a horse, and led him out. Then the
face of the girl came over him. He left the horse tied to the gate, and
went back. She was sleeping still, but brokenly. He couldn’t go.
It was a two hours’ ride to Parl’s, where the boy could ’phone.... If
the doctor left Monterey immediately, he’d get to the house about
five. It was now nearly two.
The girl slept. Walling knew it was the critical time. If she woke
better, she would probably recover. The thought was sweet to him. If
she went again into delirium.... He sat still, thinking. The hours
passed very slowly.
Suddenly Walling heard a step outside. He had heard no horse
coming. He looked out cautiously and saw four men with rifles.
Walling cocked his revolver, took down the boy’s rifle from the wall
and loaded it. He could account for some—and those who were left
might depart. It would be a battle, anyway. There was no use being
taken alive. Better be shot than hanged.
The leader made a signal. Walling raised his gun. And then—Mary
stirred. Her battle, like his, was still undecided. If she slept on, and
woke refreshed, she would get well. If not....
Walling laid down his rifle and stepped outside. The men covered
him. As he was taken down the road to the waiting horses, the
doctor and the girl’s brother drove up.
“She’s asleep,” said Walling.
The boy showed no surprise—he had heard the story from the
doctor—but his voice was pitiful:
“Why didn’t you?... I didn’t know.... Oh, my God! ... and you stayed
... when you could have got away!” He turned to the men with a
hopeless look. “It’s my fault!” he cried. “He stayed with my sister. I
thought she was dying. He didn’t tell me he couldn’t stay! He’d be
safe in the mountains by now.... Oh, my God!”
The leader glanced at his companions. They were stern men, but
they were moving uneasily. The situation was unbearable.
“How long have you been here?”
“Since about midnight,” answered Walling, though he couldn’t see
what difference it made. The leader took out his watch.
“Twelve minutes past five now. Say, we’ve been twelve minutes
getting you, that leaves five hours. We’ll stay here and rest our
horses. At twelve minutes past ten we’ll start again. That suit you,
boys?”
“What do you mean?” asked Walling.
“I mean you still have your five hours’ start; you haven’t lost
anything by staying with the sick girl.”
Walling went back to the house. Mary was still sleeping. He
touched her hand. It seemed cooler.
“Tell her I’ll write—if I can.”
“Good-bye,” said the boy.
As he went out Walling saw the men unsaddling their horses. He
took off his hat to them as he rode away into the mountains.
 THE FIRST GIRL
By Louise Pond Jewell

They had been talking of the Marsdens, who had just gone down
with the torpedoed ship; and among the kindly and affectionate
things said about them, the exceptional happiness of their married
life was mentioned. Some one spoke of this as being rather
surprising, as they had married so late in life; then, naturally enough,
another remarked what a different world it would be if every man had
been accepted by the first girl he had proposed to. And he added,
that sometimes he thought that first choice was one of truer instinct,
less tinctured with the world’s sophistication than any later one. The
bachelor contributed with a laugh that that first girl had one
advantage over the wife, no matter how perfect the latter—that she
remained the ideal. And then, little by little, they came to the point of
agreeing to tell, then and there, in the elegance and dignity of the
clubroom suited to the indulgence of their late middle years, each
one about that first girl, and what she had meant to him.
The Explorer began.
“I met her in the Adirondacks, and knew her only one summer.
After that, I couldn’t see her just as a friend—and she was unwilling
to be anything else to me. So, all my life, I’ve associated her with the
woods and lakes, with the sincerity and wholesomeness of the great
Outdoors. She had the freedom of Diana, and her lack of self-
consciousness. I never saw her except roughly clad, but she always
suggested that line of Virgil—‘She walked the goddess.’
“She was strong and lithe as a boy, could climb mountains, row,
play golf and tennis with any of us; and what a good sport. She
never fussed over getting caught in drenching rains, being bruised
and torn by rocks and thorns; and once when a small party of us lost
our way, and had to spend the night on a lonely mountainside within
sound of wolves and catamounts, her gayety made a ‘lark’ of it. She
could drive horses with a man’s steady hands; she knew the birds by
name, and all the plants and trees that grew within miles, and she
was familiar with the tracks and habits of all the small creatures of
the forest. To me she was—simply wonderful, and, I confess, always
has been.”
“What became of her?” they asked.
“Later, she married—a man who didn’t know a pine from a palm! I
always wondered....”
The Diplomat came next.
“That sort,” he said, “is a little too independent and upstanding to
belong to my type of woman. The rough, tanned skin, the strong,
capable hands—big, probably—the woolen skirt and blouse—they’ll
do very well in a girl chum, for a summer. But when it comes to a
wife, one’s demands are different. The girl I wanted first—and I’ve
never forgotten her; she was a queen—I knew during my first winter
in Washington. You talk of Diana; I prefer Venus—wholly feminine,
but never cloying. She was the kind that looks best in thin, clinging
things. I remember yet a shimmering green and silver ‘creation’ she
wore at the Inaugural Ball. She didn’t take hikes with me through
scratchy forests, but she’d dance all night long, and her little feet
would never tire. She didn’t handle guns or tillers, but you should
have seen her pretty fingers deftly managing the tea things in a
drawing-room, of a winter’s afternoon, or playing soft, enchanting
airs on the piano at twilight; or, for the matter of that, placing a
carnation in a man’s button-hole—I can feel her doing it yet! She
probably didn’t know birds, but, by George! she knew men! And
there wasn’t one of us young fellows that winter that wouldn’t gladly
have had her snare him. Only—that was the one thing she didn’t do!”
“Didn’t she ever do any snaring?”
“Oh—finally. And—the pity of it!—a man who couldn’t dance, and
had no use for Society! Sometimes....”
“How about you?” the third member of the group was asked, an
Engineer of national reputation. “Was there a first best girl for you,
too?”
 “Guilty!” he replied. “But my account will sound prosaic after these
others. You know, my early days weren’t given to expensive summer
camps, nor to Washington ballrooms. I made my own way through
college, and ‘vacations’ meant the hardest work of the year. But
when I was a Senior, all the drudgery was transformed. Paradise
wouldn’t have been in it with that little co-educational college campus
and library and chapel and classrooms; for I found her. Just a
classmate she was. You tell how your girls dressed; I never noticed
how she dressed; it might have been in shimmering green and silver,
and it might have been in linsey-woolsey, for all I knew. But—she
could think, and she could talk! We discussed everything together,
from philosophy and the evolution of history to the affairs of the day. I
spent every hour with her that I could, and in all sorts of places.
There’s a spot in the stackroom of the old library that I always visit
yet, when I go back—because of her. I’ve never known a woman
since with such a mind, such breadth and clearness; and it showed
in her face—the face of Athena, not Diana or Venus! I believed that
with such a companion at my side, to turn to in every perplexity, I
could make my life worth while. But she—saw it differently.”
“Is she a feminist now?” slyly inquired the Explorer.
“She, too, married, after a while—a fine fellow, but—anything but
a student. I can’t help....”
“Mine,” said the fourth, the Socialist, “will sound least dramatic of
all—though I assure you the time was dramatic enough for me. You
talk about your goddesses; my pedestal held just a sweet human
girl,—a nurse, serving her first year at the hospital, that time we had
the smash-up in ’80. And you talk of beauty, and style, and brain; but
with me it isn’t of a pretty face or graceful form I think when I recall
that magic time; and least of all is it of any intellectual prowess. I’m
not sure whether she knew the difference between physics and
metaphysics, or whether she’d ever heard of a cosine. But she was
endowed with the charm of charms in a woman—sympathy. She
would listen by the hour while I poured out to her my young hopes
and ambitions; I could tell her all the dreams a young fellow
cherishes most deeply—and would die of mortification if even his
best friend guessed at their existence. She always understood; and
though she talked little herself, she had the effect of making me
appear at my very best. I felt I could move the world if she would just
stand by and watch. But in spite of her kindness and gentleness she
turned me down. Many times I’ve questioned....”
“That was all right for a sick boy,” commented the Diplomat, “but
for a wife, a girl like Alison——”
“‘Alison,’” echoed the Engineer, involuntarily, “a nice name,
anyway; that was her name.”
“Why——” the Explorer mused—“that’s an odd coincidence; so
was hers—Alison Forbes.”
“Alison Forbes”—breathed the Socialist—“Alison Forbes—
Marsden!”
And suddenly there was a silence, and the four friends looked
strangely at one another. For they knew in that moment that there
had been in those lives of theirs left far behind, not four first girls, but
one—seen with different eyes.
 A SOPHISTRY OF ART
By Eugene Smith

On the station platform in Quanah, one morning, I stopped

“waiting for the train” for a moment to watch a man and woman
painting on a large signboard across the way. The inevitable
wiseacre in the little group of travelling men explained that they were
really talented artists, a man and wife.
The husband had contracted—er—a throat affection in their studio
back East, and physicians had ordered him to the open air and high,
dry altitude of west Texas. So they had come, and were earning
expenses, making a series of paintings on signboards,
advertisements of a lumber corporation, throughout the Panhandle
country.
I walked out across the tracks near where the slightly stooped
husband, in overalls, and his little wife, looking very attractive in her
neat apron and sunbonnet, were at work.
There was a pathos about the thing that went straight to my heart.
The loyal little woman and the stricken husband there in the clear,
crisp morning air and sunshine, earnestly striving, undismayed.
Something—a common sympathy—thrilled me.
And now the painting seemed artistic. The general idea was a
lovely cottage home (built, of course, with Oakley’s lumber, as was
intimated). But the cottage was not glaringly new—rather mellowed a
bit with time, it seemed, and was the more homelike for it.
In the front stood a sweet little woman, looking down a winding
road, and in the expression on her face, painted by the real little
woman, was joyous hope—almost certainty—of seeing the husband
coming down the road to her and home, after his day’s work.
The colours of sunset added to the beauty of the conception,
which altogether made desirable the having such a little wife to wait
for one each evening at such a little cottage home. And that was the
purpose of it; when you thought of home-building, you also thought
of Oakley’s lumber.
The painters were happy in their work—happy as two birds
building a nest. The wife, seated on her little stepladder, with palette
and brushes, was deftly pointing up the vines about the windows, as
all good wives should. She hummed something of a tune, now and
then looking gayly down at him, who laughed back up at her from his
work on the winding road and distant trees.
A courteous inquiry and my being an Easterner, was a passport
into their confidences. “We only paint a little while in the cool of the
morning and afternoon of each day,” he was saying to my remarks
on the weather. “It’s dangerous to lay on much paint at a time,” he
continued, “for the sand ruins it.”
“Oh, if it wasn’t for the sand storms!” she chimed in. “But we love
the country, and the folks, too; they seem so much a part of the out
of doors, you know. Though we hope—we expect—to go back home
before long.” She was looking fondly down at him.
“I had a little trouble with my throat,” he explained depreciatively.
“But this western air has just about put me in the running again. It’s
wonderful.” I could see the thankfulness in his eyes, as he smiled up
at his companion. I didn’t blame him for loving life.
In the smoking-car of the belated train we travelling men
discussed the case of the painters.
“It’s only his throat that bothers him a bit,” I denied with some
heat. “Besides, he is nearly recovered, and looks it.”
“Yes, I know; that’s characteristic. It’s what they all say when they
begin to perk up in a change of climate,” persisted the Pessimist in
the crowd. “But the average is 100 to 1 against them. I’ve seen too
many lungers out here in this country.”
Damn a Pessimist with his statistics, anyhow!
· · · · · · ·
Several months later I made another trip through the Texas
Panhandle country, and at each town going up from Quanah toward
Amarillo I saw one of the Oakley lumber advertisements prominently
displayed on large bill-boards. They were all the same, like the first
one; that is, if your glance was but a passing one. But to me, who
had grown interested in Art and things artistic, there was a difference
in the paintings. Yes, a difference! I wasn’t so sure at first. “It’s just
imagination,” I pooh-poohed the idea. But later on——
Anyhow, I soon found myself going directly from the station, on
each arrival, to look up the Oakley bill-board. It was never hard to
find. Somehow, I just got to wondering—worrying—about the welfare
of the young husband, the artist, I had met.
In the first few of the paintings I found portrayed all the life and
glad hope and expectancy that I had seen some time before in the
one at Quanah.
Then came the inevitable. Strange as it was, I knew that I had
been expecting—dreading—it; though rather in the gossip around
the hotels than in the pictures themselves, where I really found it.
That was the only surprise.
I remember, in Clarendon—the first town after you get up on the
Cap-rock of the Staked Plains—there I saw—or imagined—it first.
One is ever instinctively wary of eyesight in that land of mirages.
And in each succeeding village and town as I travelled westward
and upward, I felt it—saw it—there on the bill-boards, as if painted in
half-unconsciously by the artist: a faint trace of querulous doubt in
the face of the little, waiting wife, spirit of melancholia lying dull in the
picture.
As I was getting out of Goodnight one afternoon—a little ahead of
time—in the automobile that daily makes the round trip to Claude,
we drove past the Oakley signboard. I was in a hurry to get on to
Claude to see the trade before night, and be ready to leave for
Amarillo the next morning. But forgetting all this at the sight of the
picture on the bill-board, I asked the chauffeur to stop a minute
before it.
She was still smiling, the little wife waiting there in front of their
home for her husband’s return, but the smile was hollow and lifeless.
I knew—could see—she was full of uneasiness and dread, and was
only smiling to keep up her courage.
“That’s quite a lumber advertisement—there,” I ventured. The
chauffeur was drinking water from the canvas canteen.
 “Uh-huh!” he gulped. “I seen ’em painting it.”
“A man and woman?”
“Well, yes; but the woman did most of it. I saw her there every day
for some time. Once in a while the man—her husband, I guess—
would be tryin’ to help paint, but he was all in. You could tell it, the
way he looked.”
I winced at his words. So here it was, confirmed, what I had been
hoping was only imagination. Confound that Pessimist!
“They must have painted a good many of these signs; I see them
everywhere,” I continued, in a disinterested manner.
“There’s another’n over at Claude,” yawned the chauffeur. “I think
I remember hauling them people over in the car.”
“Over to Claude?”
“Yes—I fergit. I never pay much attention to the folks I haul,” he
remarked casually, eying me in a bored way.
Then we drove on.
A day later I arrived in Amarillo from Claude, glad, for it was my
trip’s end. I started walking uptown from the station to stretch my
legs, besides—well, there across the street, on a vacant lot, was the
Oakley bill-board, and the picture. The late afternoon sunlight fell full
across it.
I looked at the woman in the picture, whom I had come to know
for the real little wife, the artist, painting from her heart. She stood
smiling, but behind the smile I read doubt and dread realized, and
hope—almost—dying hard. For the smile was but a poor attempt,
and the joyous expectancy I saw shining in her eyes months before
at Quanah was not there now. There was a subtle air of
unmistakable despair about her. Her very frailty and dependency and
loyal effort to keep her smile wrung from me a quick sympathy.
I turned back to the drab routine of life sadly, and picking up my
grips, saw the Pessimist standing on the sidewalk with his detestable
knowing look. There behind him came the Wiseacre. It was one of
those little coincidences of a drummer’s life which so often find the
same parties together again.
“I was just looking at another one of the pictures—the last one, I
guess,” I said suddenly, feeling unashamed of my concern and
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