There is a proverb: "Fools build
houses for wise men to live in." It depends upon what you are after.
The fool gets the fun, and the wise men the bricks and mortar. I
remember a whimsical story I picked up at the bookstall of the Gare
de Lyon. I read it between Paris and Fontainebleau many years ago.
Three friends, youthful Bohemians, smoking their pipes after the
meagre dinner of a cheap restaurant in the Latin Quarter, fell to
thinking of their poverty, of the long and bitter struggle that lay
before them.
"My themes are so original," sighed the Musician. "It will take me a
year of fete days to teach the public to understand them, even if
ever I do succeed. And meanwhile I shall live unknown, neglected;
watching the men without ideals passing me by in the race, splashed
with the mud from their carriage-wheels as I beat the pavements with
worn shoes. It is really a most unjust world."
"An abominable world," agreed the Poet. "But think of me! My case
is far harder than yours. Your gift lies within you. Mine is to
translate what lies around me; and that, for so far ahead as I can
see, will always be the shadow side of life. To develop my genius to
its fullest I need the sunshine of existence. My soul is being
starved for lack of the beautiful things of life. A little of the
wealth that vulgar people waste would make a great poet for France.
It is not only of myself that I am thinking.
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