Genius

by Mark Twain

Genius, like gold and precious stones, 

is chiefly prized because of its rarity. 

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild, 

incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, 

and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter. 

Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres 

far above the vulgar world and fills his soul 

with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth. 

It is probably on account of this 

that people who have genius 

do not pay their board, as a general thing. 

Geniuses are very singular. 

If you see a young man who has frowsy hair 

and distraught look, and affects eccentricity in dress, 

you may set him down for a genius. 

If he sings about the degeneracy of a world 

which courts vulgar opulence 

and neglects brains, 

he is undoubtedly a genius. 

If he is too proud to accept assistance, 

and spurns it with a lordly air 

at the very same time 

that he knows he can't make a living to save his life, 

he is most certainly a genius. 

If he hangs on and sticks to poetry, 

notwithstanding sawing wood comes handier to him, 

he is a true genius. 

If he throws away every opportunity in life 

and crushes the affection and the patience of his friends 

and then protests in sickly rhymes of his hard lot, 

and finally persists, 

in spite of the sound advice of persons who have got sense 

but not any genius, 

persists in going up some infamous back alley 

dying in rags and dirt, 

he is beyond all question a genius. 

But above all things, 

to deftly throw the incoherent ravings of insanity into verse 

and then rush off and get booming drunk, 

is the surest of all the different signs 

of genius.