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"Do you honestly insist that you are mediocre?" "No," thoughtfully. "I am one of those stubborn men with ideas. I merely insist that I prefer to accept the tenets of mediocrity for my own peace and the peace of others." Elsa forgot those about her, forgot her intended humiliation of the man at her side.

We have all gone astray from the good road, and for a long time there is none of us, not one, who has done anything good." Elsewhere he orders his legate to declare in his name "that he, Adrian, cannot be blamed for what other popes have done before him; that he himself, when he occupied a comparatively mediocre position, had always condemned these excesses."

For even an indifferent photographer is in closer harmony with nature than a mediocre poet. 'And I was mediocre, wasn't I? he inquired humbly. 'Thank you, he said; 'you little know how you encourage me in my present undertaking for you will admit that I can photograph?

Among other things, he desired very much to know what per cent. of the novels on the fiction table was the product of writers in England. "I live in England myself," he said, very simply, "and I am curious to know this." He expressed a little impatience at the measureless flood of mediocre fiction, making a fluttering gesture conveying a sense of impotence to give it attention.

Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, his intellect was mediocre, his mind honest, his will variable, his heart in the right place. His talent, which they affected to compare with Mirabeau's, was nothing more than a power of skilfully rivetting public attention.

The leading-strings of Anacreon likewise allowed innumerable mediocre geniuses to reel about at large. The precision of Horace compelled the Germans, though but slowly, to conform to him. Comic heroic poems, mostly after the model of Pope's "Rape of the Lock," did not serve to bring in a better time.

Although the two 'confreres' had repeated that mediocre pleasantry a hundred times, they laughed at the top of their sonorous voices and succeeded in entirely unnerving the injured man. When one is suffering from a certain sort of pain, remarks like those naively exchanged between the two Roman imitators of Casal are intolerable to the hearer.

Every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural style, because in his heart he knows the truth of what I am saying. He is thus forced, at the outset, to give up any attempt at being frank or naïve a privilege which is thereby reserved for superior minds, conscious of their own worth, and therefore sure of themselves.

Having spent thirty-two years of her life as a slave she relates vividly some of her experiences. Her master Lancaster Jamison was a very kind man and never mistreated his slaves. He was a man of mediocre means, and instead of having a large plantation as was usual in those days, he ran a boarding house, the revenue therefrom furnishing him substance for a livelihood.

Again, in a series of predella histories of the Virgin, in the same place, also a very mediocre and anonymous work, there is extraordinary charm in the conception of the respective positions of Mary and Joseph at their wedding: he is quite old and grey; she young, unformed, almost a child, and she has to stand on two steps to be on his level, raising her head with a beautiful, childlike earnestness, quite unlike the conventional bridal timidity of other painters.