Produced by Charlene Taylor, Matthew Wheaton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) IMMORTAL YOUTH _A Study in the Will to Create_ _Behold my most beautiful work: the souls that I have sculptured. These they cannot destroy. Let the wood burn! The soul is mine._ --Romain Rolland: _Colas Breugnon_ IMPRINTED MCMXIX McGRATH-SHERRILL PRESS GRAPHIC ARTS BUILDING BOSTON COPYRIGHT NINETEEN NINETEEN LUCIEN PRICE _The first printing of this memoir is one thousand copies. When these are gone, those who wish more can obtain them from McGrath-Sherrill Press, the publisher, Graphic Arts Building, Boston, Massachusetts, for one dollar a copy._ [Music] In _the third act of Wagner's last music-drama there comes a flourish of muted horns, remote, mysterious. In it sounds the grandeur of that quest which never ends--the quest of the Holy Grail. The phrase is repeated, and over the flower-starred meadow under the April sun of Good Friday morning comes a knight in dark armor, his visor down, carrying the holy spear. It is_ PARSIFAL. _His errand is the errand of aspiring youth in all lands and all ages. I set that phrase of music, compact with the poetry and pain of idealism, at the beginning of these pages in token of the spiritual brotherhood._ [Illustration: _Portrait of the artist by himself_] IMMORTAL YOUTH Give me that man That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. --HAMLET I There was a humble restaurant on Charles Street where cabmen and chauffeurs could be induced to tell the story of their lives over a combination-supper of lamb chop and two fried eggs costing (that was in 1912), with coffee and rolls, twenty-five cents. Across the table one evening in the spring of that year sat a young man about twenty-four years old. Anyone would have taken a second look at him; also a third, a fourth, and as many more as good manners would permit. What was there about him that attracted attention? It was hard to say. The dark eyes with a somber light burning in them? The rugged features and swarthy complexion with a ruddy glow of health in each jowl? The hands; very large and finely muscled? (I have never seen a more beautiful pair of hands on a human being.) It was all of these things and none of them. Rather it was the look of one with immense forces in reserve, bound on an errand. Impossible to guess anything from his clothes: dark suit, shirt of gray flannel, and black knitted tie. Chauffeur? Hardly. Well then, what? Who?