"There was once a man who was nearly dead from a disease. One day while taking the air a friend cried to him encouragingly, 'Well, I see that you're up and about again.' 'Yes,' replied the sick man good-naturedly, 'I'm able to walk the length of the block now.' This notion was so irresistible that both the quick and the dying burst into laughter." * * * * * Among the longer entries in this note-book is the following remarkable psychological study, having as its title TEMPERAMENT "That morning Kendle had seen himself famous. As he worked he began to feel good in his brain and in his heart and in his stomach. He felt virile, elated, full of power, and strangely happy. The joy of creating a thing of art was upon him. Thrills ran down his spine and into his legs. As he looked at his work he admired it. He knew that this was good art. He felt that here was genius. He saw himself in a delectable picture, an idol applauded of the multitude, and loved by it. For he believed that the multitude was born, and ate and slept, and squabbled among itself, and acquired property, and begot offspring, but to await the arrival of genius. And the only genius he knew was genius in eccentric painting. The only genius worth while that is, for there is a genius that invents labor-saving machines, telephones, X-rays, and so forth; but nobody loves that genius. It occurred to him that he was a very lovable man, with all his faults (his faults were the lovable ones of genius), and he would soon have achieved a distinction that would make any woman proud of him. He determined to renew his addresses to----. "Somehow in the evening his intoxication had died down. He felt very sad. His work lay before him with so little eccentricity to it that he was ashamed. His sense of power had quite departed. And now he dismally felt that he would never amount to anything. He was a failure. An idle, wicked, disgraceful fellow, no good in the world, and not worth any woman's attention. His heart felt sick when he thought this. He was very miserable. He despised himself. So he sighed. It would have been better, he thought, if he had apprenticed himself to the plumber's trade in his boyhood. He would in that case have grown up happy and contented, remained at home and done his duty, respected by his neighbors and himself, though only a plumber. A plumber is a good honest man that pays his debts.