The professor gazed over his spectacles at him.

"Why?"

"I don't think I am getting any good out of it."

"But how can you tell what good you are getting?"

"I don't seem to feel that I am," said Thyrsis, deprecatingly.

"It is not to be supposed that you would feel it," said the
other--"not at this early stage. You must wait."

"But I don't like the method, sir."

"What's wrong with the method?"

Thyrsis was embarrassed. He was not sure, he said; but he did not
think that writing could be taught. Anyway, one had first to have
something worth saying--

"Are you laboring under the delusion that you know anything about
writing?" demanded the professor. (He had written across Thyrsis'
last composition the words, "Feeble and trivial".)

"Why, no," began the boy.

"Because if you are, let me disabuse your mind at once. There is no
one in the class who knows less about writing than yourself."