" I have no idea
what genius is, but so far as I can form any conception about it, I
should say it was a stupid word which cannot be too soon abandoned
to scientific and literary claqueurs.
I do not know exactly what Christina expected, but I should
imagine it was something like this: "My children ought to be all
geniuses, because they are mine and Theobald's, and it is naughty of
them not to be; but, of course, they cannot be so good and clever as
Theobald and I were, and if they show signs of being so it will be
naughty of them. Happily, however, they are not this, and yet it is
very dreadful that they are not. As for genius- hoity-toity, indeed
-why, a genius should turn intellectual somersaults as soon as it is
born, and none of my children have yet been able to get into the
newspapers. I will not have children of mine give themselves airs -it
is enough for them that Theobald and I should do so."
She did not know, poor woman, that the true greatness wears an
invisible cloak, under cover of which it goes in and out among men
without being suspected; if its cloak does not conceal it from
itself always, and from all others for many years, its greatness
will ere long shrink to very ordinary dimensions.
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