More Penguin Persons | Pinguinmenschen

After all, there is more pathos than humor in his periodic visits to the penguins. Isolated, from childhood, by parental care, from the common friendships and associations of life, still further isolated in mature years by his own genius and early and lasting intellectual eminence, the wonder is that he was not more unhappy, rather than less. He had few friends, and those few, like Professor Norton, were intellectual companions as well, always ready and eager to debate with him the problems of Art and Life  which were forever vexing him. Their companionship must often have been a stimulant when he needed, perhaps, a narcotic. Their intercourse drove him continually in upon himself, where there was only seething unrest, when he needed so often to be taken completely out of himself, where there was peace.

And, in his hours of need, he turned to the Alps, and the penguins. But both were dumb things, after all, that could not quite meet his mood, could not quite satisfy that hunger which is in all of us for the common association of our kind, for the humble jest and cheery laugh of a smiling humanity. Neither of them was Bobbie, who adds personality to the penguin, and satisfies a double need.
In: Penguin Persons and Peppermints, Walter Prichard Eaton, 1922.