Max Brand

The Night Horseman Max Brand

At the age of six Randall Byrne could name and bound every state in the Union and give the date ofits admission; at nine he was conversant with Homeric Greek and Caesar; at twelve he readAristophanes with perfect understanding of the allusions of the day and divided his leisure betweenOvid and Horace; at fifteen, wearied by the simplicity of Old English and Thirteenth CenturyItalian, he dipped into the history of Philosophy and passed from that, naturally, into calculus andthe higher mathematics; at eighteen he took an A. B. from Harvard and while idling away a pleasantsummer with Hebrew and Sanscrit he delved lightly into biology and its kindred sciences, havingreached the conclusion that Truth is greater than Goodness or Beauty, because it comprises both, and the whole is greater than any of its parts; at twenty-one he pocketed his Ph. D. and was touchedwith the fever of his first practical enthusiasm-surgery. At twenty-four he was an M. D. and adistinguished diagnostician, though he preferred work in his laboratory in his endeavor to resolvethe elements into simpler forms; also he published at this time a work on anthropology whosecirculation was limited to two hundred copies, and he received in return two hundred letters ofcongratulation from great men who had tried to read his book; at twenty-seven he collapsed one finespring day on the floor of his laboratory. That afternoon he was carried into the presence of a greatphysician who was also a very vulgar man. The great physician felt his pulse and looked into his dimeyes