artist, and the very qualities that enable him to delight the
public disable him from delighting it uninterruptedly. "No rose
blooms right along," as the English boys at Oxford made an
American collegian say in a theme which they imagined for him in
his national parlance; and the man of letters, as an artist, is
apt to have times and seasons when he cannot blossom. Very often
it shall happen that his mind will lie fallow between novels or
stories for weeks and months at a stretch; when the suggestions
of the friendly editor shall fail to fruit in the essays or
articles desired; when the muse shall altogether withhold
herself, or shall respond only in a feeble dribble of verse which
he might sell indeed, but which it would not be good business for
him to put on the market. But supposing him to be a very
diligent and continuous worker, and so happy as to have fallen on
a theme that delights him and bears him along, he may please
himself so ill with the result of his labors that he can do
nothing less in artistic conscience than destroy a day's work, a
week's work, a month's work. I know one man of letters who wrote
to-day, and tore up tomorrow for nearly a whole summer. But even
if part of the mistaken work may be saved, because it is good
work out of place, and not intrinsically bad, the task of
reconstruction wants almost as much time as the production; and
then, when all seems done, comes the anxious and endless process
of revision. These drawbacks reduce the earning capacity of what
I may call the high-cost man of letters in such measure that an
author whose name is known everywhere, and whose reputation is
commensurate with the boundaries of his country, if it does not
transcend them, shall have the income, say, of a rising young
physician, known to a few people in a subordinate city.