yet. He drew up a chair to the table at which he wrote or tried to write,
and began taking pens and paper from the drawer. There was a great pile
of ruled paper there; all of it used, on one side, and signifying many
hours of desperate scribbling, of heart-searching and rack of his brain;
an array of poor, eager lines written by a waning fire with waning hope;
all useless and abandoned. He took up the sheets cheerfully, and began in
delicious idleness to look over these fruitless efforts. A page caught
his attention; he remembered how he wrote it while a November storm was
dashing against the panes; and there was another, with a queer blot in
one corner; he had got up from his chair and looked out, and all the
earth was white fairyland, and the snowflakes whirled round and round in
the wind. Then he saw the chapter begun of a night in March: a great gale
blew that night and rooted up one of the ancient yews in the churchyard.
He had heard the trees shrieking in the woods, and the long wail of the
wind, and across the heaven a white moon fled awfully before the
streaming clouds. And all these poor abandoned pages now seemed sweet,
and past unhappiness was transmuted into happiness, and the nights of
toil were holy. He turned over half a dozen leaves and began to sketch
out the outlines of the new book on the unused pages; running out a
skeleton plan on one page, and dotting fancies, suggestions, hints on
others. He wrote rapidly, overjoyed to find that loving phrases grew
under his pen; a particular scene he had imagined filled him with desire;
he gave his hand free course, and saw the written work glowing; and
action and all the heat of existence quickened and beat on the wet page.
Happy fancies took shape in happier words, and when at last he leant back
in his chair he felt the stir and rush of the story as if it had been
some portion of his own life. He read over what he had done with a
renewed pleasure in the nimble and flowing workmanship, and as he put the
little pile of manuscript tenderly in the drawer he paused to enjoy the
anticipation of tomorrow's labor.