No one wished to speak what all felt, and when the silence was broken, it was with talk of the poet rather than of the singer. To the singing they came only by slow degrees, and over it, when at length their admiration found speech, they passed lightly. One thing which seemed to be effected by the music was the awakening of Fenton from his gloomy reverie. He began to talk in his most extravagant and whimsical style, answering every question instantly, if with no especial care concerning the relevancy of his replies. "What nonsense it is," he exclaimed, "to talk of any man's originating any thing. Why, when even Adam couldn't be made without material, what are we, his descendants, that we should hope to create? The authors of this old wisdom that we revamp to-day copied somebody further back, and those in turn put down what the masses felt; collected the foam which gathered on the yeasty waves of their age. Every truth comes to the people first if they could only recognize it when it comes. It is evolved by the friction of the masses, just as a fire is set by the rubbing together of tree-boughs in primeval forests, and the dusky redman incontinently roasted in his uncontaminated innocence. The longer I live the less faith I have that a man evolves any thing from his inner consciousness. Fancies are only the lies of the mendacious brain, which perceives one thing and declares to us another." "Go slow, Fenton," interrupted Herman, "you know our poor wits are apt to be dazzled by too much brilliancy." "The age," Fenton rattled on, "blooms once into a great man as an aloe into a crown of bloom." "Right in there," broke in Rangely, who longed for a share in the conversation, "just consider how necessary it is that every art producer shall be in sympathy with the human life about him. That he should take the best wherever it is to be found. There's a miserable sentiment about shutting one's self up in some dark corner, and producing some tremendous thing. Don't you know how many New York and Boston artists have gone to Europe and hermetically sealed themselves up somewhere to ferment into greatness like a jug of cider turning into vinegar in a farmer's cellar?" "That's what made Hunt such a big fellow," Herman interposed; "because he took the good wherever it offered." "But that depends upon whether a man goes direct to Nature for inspiration," declared Fenton, "or sets himself to get a living by filching the good things his neighbors have won from her." "Hunt did go to nature; that is just where he was great."