great , would he?”⁠—“Undoubtedly!” replied the other old patriot vehemently, “otherwise he could not have done it! It was mad perhaps to wish such a thing! But perhaps everything great has been just as mad at its commencement!”⁠—“Misuse of words!” cried his interlocutor, contradictorily⁠—“strong! strong! Strong and mad! not great!”⁠—The old men had obviously become heated as they thus shouted their “truths” in each other’s faces, but I, in my happiness and apartness, considered how soon a stronger one may become master of the strong, and also that there is a compensation for the intellectual superficialising of a nation⁠—namely, in the deepening of another.