_A Study in the Will to Create_
_Behold my most beautiful work:
the souls that I have sculptured.
These they cannot destroy. Let
the wood burn! The soul is mine._
--Romain Rolland: _Colas Breugnon_
IMPRINTED MCMXIX
McGRATH-SHERRILL PRESS
GRAPHIC ARTS BUILDING
BOSTON
COPYRIGHT NINETEEN NINETEEN
LUCIEN PRICE
_The first printing of this memoir is one thousand copies.
When these are gone, those who wish more can obtain them from
McGrath-Sherrill Press, the publisher, Graphic Arts Building,
Boston, Massachusetts, for one dollar a copy._
[Music]
In _the third act of Wagner's last music-drama there comes a
flourish of muted horns, remote, mysterious. In it sounds the
grandeur of that quest which never ends--the quest of the Holy
Grail. The phrase is repeated, and over the flower-starred
meadow under the April sun of Good Friday morning comes a knight
in dark armor, his visor down, carrying the holy spear. It is_
PARSIFAL. _His errand is the errand of aspiring youth in all
lands and all ages. I set that phrase of music, compact with the
poetry and pain of idealism, at the beginning of these pages in
token of the spiritual brotherhood._
[Illustration: _Portrait of the artist by himself_]