For my part, I do not write
better than I do, because I have no ideas worth better clothes than they
can pick up for themselves. "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing
with your best pains," is a saying which has injured our literature more
than any other single thing. How many a lumber-closet since the world
began has been filled by the results of this purblind and delusive theory!
But this is not autobiographical,--save that to have written it shows how
little prudence my life has taught me.
* * * * *
I remember wondering, in 1871, how anybody could write novels. I had
produced two or three short stories; but to expand such a thing until it
should cover two or three hundred pages seemed an enterprise far beyond my
capacity. Since then, I have accomplished the feat only too often; but I
doubt whether I have a much clearer idea than before of the way it is
done; and I am certain of never having done it twice in the same way. The
manner in which the plant arrives at maturity varies according to the
circumstances in which the seed is planted and cultivated; and the
cultivator, in this instance at least, is content to adapt his action to
whatever conditions happen to exist.
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