Lancaster's summaries show that of 100 actors, the average age of their first great success was exactly 18 years. Those he chose had taken to the stage of their own accord, for actors are more born than made. Nearly half of them were Irish, the unemotional American stock having furnished far less. Few make their first success on the stage after 22, but from 16 to 20 is the time to expect talent in this line, although there is a second rise in his curve before and still more after 25, representing those whose success is more due to intellect. Taking the average age of 100 novelists when their first story met with public approval, the curve reaches its highest point between 30 and 35. Averaging 53 poets, the age at 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: