She felt
that the Rivi system and the dirty, obscure little Moldini
between them were destroying Mildred by destroying
all ``temperament'' in her.
It was the old, old criticism of talent upon genius.
Genius has always won in its own time and generation
all the world except talent. To talent contemporaneous
genius, genius seen at its patient, plodding toil,
seems coarse and obvious and lacking altogether in
inspiration. Talent cannot comprehend that creation
is necessarily in travail and in all manner of unloveliness.
Mildred toiled on like a slave under the lash, and
Moldini and the Rivi system were her twin relentless
drivers. She learned to rule herself with an iron hand.
She discovered the full measure of her own deficiencies,
and she determined to make herself a competent lyric
soprano, perhaps something of a dramatic soprano.
She dismissed from her mind all the ``high'' thoughts,
all the dreams wherewith the little people, even the
little people who achieve a certain success, beguile the
tedium of their journey along the hard road.
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