Farming with a Pen 5 



farmer, with the pen, and not the plough, as the 

 only implement by which I had so far justified 

 my existence ; surely the first man ever known 

 to go farming with a pen. There was also a 

 derelict brother The farm might make a living 

 for him, and I could live without it. 



It appears that madness, with enough method 

 in it, may be excess of sanity. Fail at something 

 never done before, and your critics will point to 

 the moon for explanation ; succeed at it, enlarging 

 the limits of life, and you may find yourself 

 denounced for not being mad. It appears there 

 are vested interests even beyond the boundaries 

 of human achievement, and mediocrity is ever 

 disturbed by what has never been before, though 

 the whole of human progress is founded on it. 

 Meantime, not less than nine-tenths is mediocrity. 

 In the whole world to-day there is little to satisfy 

 us that was not at one time quite unprecedented, 

 and so we may safely measure a people's capacity 

 for progress by their relative attachment to pre- 

 cedent and initiative. It is not easy to move 

 forward by looking only backward, but in Ireland 

 we have the unnatural instance of a historic people 

 determined to look no other way, which accounts 

 for the stumbling. It is only when they do not 

 know where they are that people have need to 

 look backward, and even then, they have at least as 

 much need to look forward. The vision of a fallen 

 people is always backward, and their only vision 

 when they are fallen to rise no more. 

 After fifteen years in the Strand writing, 



