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Show REAL GENIUSES NOT "QUEER" For Instance. Taking Insufficient Nourishment Cannot Be Taken as Mark of Brilliancy. The legend that Meredith lived on the contents of a sack of oatmeal while be wrote bis masterpieces is pure myth, writes St. .John Ervine in the Manchester (Fng.l Guardian, lie was particularly addicted to the pleasures of the table and could not have written writ-ten his hooks on a diet of oatmeal. His letters are full of references to food and wine and. like Doctor Johnson, he contemplated writing; a cookery book, lie bad the capacity, which every man of pc-nius has, of b'ing highly interested interest-ed in the most ordinary things. It is your third-rate person who is not interested in food and drink and the common things of life. Your man of genius demands that these things shall be so attended to that he can appreciate them at their best. Moreover, More-over, since eating nnd drinking are necessary to all of us, be wishes them to be done in such a way that he shall not be diverted from his job by complaints com-plaints of the clumsy and insufficient arrangements for them. Herbert Silencer complained of the stupid spouts that manufacturers put on jugs so that it is impossible to pour liquid out of them without spilling spill-ing it and he went to the trouble to invent a paper' fastener because he was dissatisfied with those in common use. A third-rate person would have been much too superior to think of such things. |