which most first poems were published falls between 15 and 20. The average age
at which first publication showed talent he places at 18, which is in striking
contrast with the average age of inventors at time of the first patent, which is 33
years.
A still more striking contrast is that between 100 musicians and 100 professional
men. Music is by far the most precocious and instinctive of all talents. The
average age when marked talent was first shown is a little less than 10 years, 95
per cent showed rare talent before 16, while the professional men graduated at an
average age of 24 years and 11 months, and 10 years must be added to mark the
point of recognized success. Of 53 artists, 90 per cent showed talent before 20,
the average age being 17.2 years. Of 100 pioneers who made their mark in the
Far West, leaving home to seek fortunes near the frontier, the greatest number
departed before they were 18. Of 118 scientists, Lancaster estimates that their
life interest first began to glow on the average a little before they were 19. In
general, those whose success is based on emotional traits antedate by some years
those whose renown is more purely in intellectual spheres, and taking all
together, the curves of the first class culminate between 18 and 20.
While men devoted to physical science, and their biographers, give us perhaps
the least breezy accounts of this seething age, it may be, because they mature
late, nearly all show its ferments and its circumnutations, as a few almost
random illustrations clearly show:
Tycho Brahe, born in 1596 of illustrious Danish stock, was adopted by an uncle,
and entered the University of Copenhagen at thirteen, where multiplication,
division, philosophy, and metaphysics were taught. When he was fourteen, an
eclipse of the sun occurred, which aroused so much interest that he decided to
devote himself to the study of the heavenly bodies. He was able to construct a
series of interesting instruments on a progressive scale of size, and finally to
erect the great Observatory of Uraniberg on the Island of Hven. Strange to say,
his scientific conclusions had for him profound astrological significance. An
important new star he declared was "at first like Venus and Jupiter and its effects
will therefore first be pleasant; but as it then became like Mars, there will next
come a period of wars, seditions, captivity, and death of princes, and destruction
of cities, together with dryness and fiery meteors in the air, pestilence, and
venomous snakes. Lastly, the star became like Saturn, and thus will finally come
a time of want, death, imprisonment, and all kinds of sad things!" He says that "a