why, and no one ever told me why."

"You thought all that?" said he. "Well, that's more hopeful! Have you ever
done any essay work?"

"Yes," I said, "and that was the worst of all--no one ever showed me how to
do it in my own way, but always in some one else's way."

He sate a little in silence. Then he said: "But mind you, that's not all! I
don't think writing is the end of life. The real point is to feel the
things, to understand the business, to have ideas about life. I don't want
people to learn how to write interestingly about things in which they are
not interested--but to be interested first, and then to write if they can.
I like to turn out a good writer, who can say what he feels and believes.
But I'm just as pleased when a man tells me that writing is rubbish, and
that he is going away to do something real. The real--that's what I care
about! I don't want men to come and pick up grains of truth and reality,
and work them into their stuff. I have turned out a few men like that, and
those are my worst failures. You have got to care about ideas, if you come
here, and to get the ideas into shape. You have got to learn what is
beautiful and what is not, because the only business of a real writer is
with beauty--not a sickly exotic sort of beauty, but the beauty of health
and strength and generous feeling. I can't have any humbugs here, though I
have sent out some humbugs. It's a hard life this, and a tiring life;
though if you are the right sort of fellow, you will get plenty of fun out
of it. But we don't waste time here; and if a man wastes time, out he
goes."

"I believe I can work as hard as anyone," I said, "though I have shown no
signs of it--and anyhow, I should like to try. And I do really want to