THE SANITY OF GENIUS.

I talked with one who made a life “success” Along convention’s smooth and hedge-trimmed road, Type of that class who bear but their own load, And “shrewdly” shun the fiery storm and stress, When hearts and souls unselfish forward press To mitigate oppression’s stinging goad; Reformers he called geniuses, but showed That genius is “a kind of foolishness.” Well, when I thought how soon he would be cold, How soon forgotten, and in how few years His idiot heirs would spend his hoardings vain, While “the eccentrics” would in ways untold Make ever less the sum of human tears, It seemed to me—genius alone is sane! Rowland B. Mahany.