Produced by Suzanne Shell and PG Distributed Proofreaders
By Max Brand
The Untamed Trailin'
The Night Horseman
1920
At the age of six Randall Byrne could name and bound every state in theUnion and give the date of its admission; at nine he was conversant withHomeric Greek and Caesar; at twelve he read Aristophanes with perfectunderstanding of the allusions of the day and divided his leisurebetween Ovid and Horace; at fifteen, wearied by the simplicity of OldEnglish and Thirteenth Century Italian, he dipped into the history ofPhilosophy and passed from that, naturally, into calculus and the highermathematics; at eighteen he took an A.B. from Harvard and while idlingaway a pleasant summer with Hebrew and Sanscrit he delved lightly intobiology and its kindred sciences, having reached the conclusion thatTruth is greater than Goodness or Beauty, because it comprises both, andthe whole is greater than any of its parts; at twenty-one he pocketedhis Ph.D. and was touched with the fever of his first practicalenthusiasm—surgery. At twenty-four he was an M.D. and a distinguisheddiagnostician, though he preferred work in his laboratory in hisendeavor to resolve the elements into simpler forms; also he publishedat this time a work on anthropology whose circulation was limited to twohundred copies, and he received in return two hundred letters ofcongratulation from great men who had tried to read his book; attwenty-seven he collapsed one fine spring day on the floor of hislaboratory.