Herman Melville

“ Nay, I take it, in certain cases, that good sense is simply owing to the absence of those. Much more, cheerfulness. Unpossessed of genius, Hautboy is eternally blessed."
"Ah? You would not think him an extraordinary genius then?"
"Genius? What! Such a short, fat fellow a genius! Genius, like Cassius, is lank."
"Ah? But could you not fancy that Hautboy might formerly have had genius, but luckily getting rid of it, at last fatted up?"
"For a genius to get rid of his genius is as impossible as for a man in the galloping consumption to get rid of that." ”

“ To-day, from house to house he hies, teaching fiddling for a living. Crammed once with fame, he is now hilarious without it. With genius and without fame, he is happier than a king. More a prodigy now than ever. ”

“ With you and me, the elbow of the hurrying clerk, and the pole of the remorseless omnibus, shove him. He who has a hundred times been crowned with laurels, now wears, as you see, a bunged beaver. Once fortune poured showers of gold into his lap, as showers of laurel leaves upon his brow. ”

“ SO my poem is damned, and immortal fame is not for me! I am nobody forever and ever. Intolerable fate!
Snatching my hat, I dashed down the criticism and rushed out into Broadway, where enthusiastic throngs were crowding to a circus in a side-street near by, very recently started, and famous for a capital clown.
Presently my old friend Standard rather boisterously accosted me.
"Well met, Helmstone, my boy! Ah! what's the matter? Haven't been committing murder? Ain't flying justice? You look wild!" ”

“ It is only five minutes' walk."
"If you will promise to fiddle for us, we will," said Standard.
Fiddle! thought I—he's a jigembob fiddler then? No wonder genius declines to measure its pace to a fiddler's bow. My spleen was very strong on me now.
"I will gladly fiddle you your fill," replied Hautboy to Standard. "Come on."
In a few minutes we found ourselves in the fifth story of a sort of storehouse, in a lateral street to Broadway. It was curiously furnished with all sorts of odd furniture which seemed to have been obtained, piece by piece, at auctions of old-fashioned household stuff. ”