Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/21

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THE UNKNOWN MAN
5

Man?" These portraits are all different, to be sure, and pedantic critics maintain that they represent different persons not as yet identified. But I have no use for the critics, and I have perfect faith in the multiplicity of my hero's faces. How noble and how beautiful his countenance! Sometimes he is represented as a gentleman deep in thought. Sometimes he is a pale youth seen in profile against a window. Sometimes he is a wise, mature man toying with a glove or a falcon. But you can always see in his face that aristocracy of soul and that natural reserve which have made him unwilling to let his name be trumpeted by the vulgar mouth of fame. ****** You may think that I am jesting, after the fashion of Swift or Carlyle. No: I desire, seriously, to suggest a matter for serious thought. We are in general too much inclined to attribute importance to all that has a name, to all that is legitimized by a signature, by print, by foolscap. We fail to realize that most of what we call civilization has been produced by people of whose lives and personalities we know absolutely nothing. Those who remain anonymous and unknown have done far more for us than all the men whose fame fills biographical dictionaries. The fairest fancies, the simplest melodies, the most enduring phrases, the fundamental inventions, are the