"Tell me, little blind creature, whose song is so charming, where did you
learn to sing?"

The little creature turned its head a trifle to one side as though
listening for the fall of nuts.

"Ah, indeed!" said the traveller: "You, whose voice is so clear, is this
all you get to eat?"

The little blind creature smiled . . . .

It is a twilight forest in which we writers of fiction wander, and once
in a way, though all this has been said before, we may as well remind
ourselves and others why the light is so dim; why there is so much bad
and false fiction; why the demand for it is so great. Living in a world
where demand creates supply, we writers of fiction furnish the exception
to this rule. For, consider how, as a class, we come into existence.
Unlike the followers of any other occupation, nothing whatever compels
any one of us to serve an apprenticeship. We go to no school, have to
pass no examination, attain no standard, receive no diploma. We need not
study that which should be studied; we are at liberty to flood our minds
with all that should not be studied. Like mushrooms, in a single sight
we spring up--a pen in our hands, very little in our brains, and
who-knows-what in our hearts!

Few of us sit down in cold blood to write our first stories; we have
something in us that we feel we must express. This is the beginning of
the vicious circle. Our first books often have some thing in them. We
are sincere in trying to express that something. It is true we cannot
express it, not having learnt how, but its ghost haunts the pages the