The Silver Arrow

BY ELBERT HUBBARD
PRINTED BY THE ROYCROFTERS AT EAST AURORA, N.Y.

Copyrighted 1923 By The Roycrofters

And so it happened that Sir Walter Raleigh, the graceful, the gracious, the generous, had spread his cloak in the pathway of Queen Elizabeth and had been taken into her especial favor.
The Queen was nineteen years older than Sir Walter; that is to say, she was in her fifties, and he was in his thirties.
But Queen Bess hated old age, and swore a halibi for the swift passing years, and always delighted in the title of the Virgin Queen.
Sir Walter did one great thing for England, and one for Ireland. He taught the English the use of tobacco, and he discovered the Irish potato —which is native to America.
They do say that Sir Walter and Queen Elizabeth enjoyed many a quiet smoke with their feet on the table—so as to equalize circulation. Both of them were big folk, with plans and ambitions plus. Sir Walter was contemporary with Shakespeare, and in fact looked like him, acted like him and had a good deal of the same agile, joyous, bubbling fertility of mind. That is, Sir Walter and William were lovers by nature; and love rightly exercised, and alternately encouraged and thwarted, gives the alternating current, and lo! we have that which the world calls genius. And I am told by those who know, that you can never get genius in any other way.