consciously a sense of life to many other people who seemed dead before he walked among them.

Great men can never be mistaken or ignored. By their works ye shall know them," if it be possible to watch them at their work, or to study after many years or centuries- their easily accomplished products: but, otherwise, it is always possible to recognize them by their very presence. Something clutches at your throat and squeezes tears into your eyes. It is a recorded fact of history that one day, when Abraham Lincoln was gazing out of a window of the White House, he turned suddenly to Secretary Stanton and said, There 99 goes a man ! His eyes had been attracted by a casual pedestrian that he had never seen before. This man was Walt Whitman, the greatest American, with the single exception of Lincoln himself, that has ever yet been born.

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The thing to be admired among men is greatness; and, wherever greatness undeniably exists, there is no time to quarrel about minor questions of degree or quality. Whoever can do any tiny thing, however trivial, more perfectly than any other person in the world is admitted, by this token, to the fraternity of greatness. Nearly twenty years ago it was my privilege to meet a bootblack in Detroit whose name I never asked but whose eyes I shall never forget. My shoes were very shabby as I mounted his throne; for they had not been shined since I had left New York. He went to work upon them with a will: and, when he had finished, "Can they do that better in the east?" he asked, and, "No!" I answered. "That's because I put my

soul into it," he said. This was an Italian boy, with a face like those that Ghirlandaio loved to paint, many centuries ago, in Florence; and he will never see this printed paragraph that celebrates his glory; but he made me feel alive, one little moment, nearly twenty years ago; and I wish, now, that I knew his name.

Whatever sits in moonlight is lighted by the moon and silvered into poetry; and whoever comes into contact with a super-person is tingled, for the moment, into life. The recipient imagination leaps upon the back of Pegasus; for like calls out to like, and a great person unconsciously requires us to greet him sympathetically with a kindred greatness. We ascend to something better than our ordinary self when we encounter the greatest maker of poems or of pies that happens to be living in our world. These encounters add a cubit to our stature, and send us back to our customary tasks "eager to labor and eager to be happy."

The mystic force called "personality" is nothing but an aura that is worn by people who can do some single thing extremely well and with consummate grace. Personality is always charming and enlivening; and the application of its power is not at all dependent on the exercise of that particular proficiency in which the person who attracts us may excel. Great people are not called upon to prove their greatness. Sarah Bernhardt, at the age of six and seventy, can no longer slink about the stage with that agile grace, as of a panther, that some of us remember: in fact, because of her amputated leg, she cannot walk at all. When the cur

tain rises, she is now disclosed reclining on a couch or seated in a chair; and only at the climax does she climb to her feet with obvious assistance and thereby send a shudder through the audience. But her triumph comes early, at the very rising of the curtain, before she has made a movement, before she has uttered a single syllable with the shattered remnants of a voice that once was golden: for the audience immediately knows-without asking or waiting for any evidence that this is one of the great women of the world. There are cheers and there are tears; for greatness is rare, and demands the sounding of sennets and the pouring of libations. Journeys are measured by mile-stones; and our journey through life is measured by those moments when we have been quickened into momentary greatness by contact with great people.

To be a great base-ball player is more impressive than to be a mediocre painter, a second-rate statesman, or an ordinary author. It is nobler to be able to beat the world at some plebeian task, like the sewing on of buttons, than to be an inefficient king or a defeated general. This the public always knows, without asking any questions; and nobody is certain or is worthy of applause unless he can do at least some little thing that he was born to do by nature, more perfectly than that thing can be done by anybody else. But such a person seems to be transfigured by the central and essential source of energy that lives within him; and this transfiguration easily includes whoever comes within the circle of its radiation. The service of great people to the public may be summed up in the saying that who

ever looks upon or listens to them is always lifted, for the moment, out of mediocrity and required to ascend to the height of the occasion.

On the evening of October 22, 1917, the Lexington Opera House - which is one of the largest theatres in New York was crowded from the floor to the roof. Hundreds of people were standing up, and hundreds of other people had been turned away. This vast audience sat respectfully through a vaudeville program of five preliminary numbers. At last the orchestra struck up with a medley of familiar Scottish airs, and there came a quickened sense of something wonderful about to be.

And then the miracle occurred. A little stocky man in a red kilt came trotting on the stage, and turned the funniest of faces to the footlights; and the whole enormous auditorium exploded with volley after volley of applause and the high shrill shriek of cheers. It was a long, long time before this thunderous initial roar subsided; but, when he could be heard, the funny little red-faced man proceeded to sing a song, with the refrain, "I'm going to Marry 'Arry, on the Fifth of Jan-u-ary." There was no art in the words and very little in the music; but there was great art in the rendering. The audience shouted with laughter; and every laugh came precisely at the predetermined moment, with the full power of three thousand pairs of lungs behind it.

Then came other songs; and the stocky little man, who had made that whole vast theatre-full of people laugh as one, soon made them weep as one, and ulti

mately made them sing as one. His third or fourth number was a new song, which nobody had ever heard before; but, when Harry Lauder came to the refrain, he heard it taken up and hummed by hundreds and hundreds of voices in the auditorium. Then he paused; and, with consummate tact, he deliberately rehearsed the audience in the proper handling of the chorus, so that, when he came again to the refrain, the very walls resounded with the singing of a thousand happy people. These people had come to enjoy the art of Harry Lauder; but the great man had given them a greater gift by teaching them to enjoy themselves.

Through all of this, the present writer retained sufficient critical intelligence to perceive the artist's mastery of rhythm and of tempo, his marvelous sense of the emphasis of pause, and his genius for taking immediate advantage of every unforeseen reaction of the audience. He never said or sang a word too little or too much; he never overworked a laugh nor allowed a tear to dry and be forgotten. But these are minor matters: for art, however brilliant, must take second place to life, and it was life itself that Harry Lauder flung fullfingered through the auditorium. When calls for encores came, it was, "Harry, sing us this!" and, 'Harry, sing us that!" for he was only Harry now, and hundreds of people were shouting loud the titles of the songs that they desired.

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There were many, many calls for "Wee Hoose Among the Heather," but Harry paused before he "That's nae mair a song," he said, “it's a hymn now"; and then he told how he had sung it

rendered it.