native habitat. He has secured a smattering of the native tongue, and
has even taken unto himself a temporary native wife. A bold man, he
has, in his way, lived dangerously and intensely. He has besides heard
men of his own race living in the quarter tell weird tales of romantic
nature, perhaps of a white girl who came out East, or of a native girl
who had won the heart of an Englishman to his undoing. At last _B_ has
had enough of it, and has come home to the old country, his England,
and sits down to his new job, the exploitation of his knowledge and
experience of the East. Possibly a few friends who had listened to his
tales urged him to set them down on paper, and _B_, who had not thought
of it before, thinks it is not such a bad idea, and getting a supply of
paper and a typewriter launches forth on a career as a writer. He is
intent on turning out a good tale, and does remarkably well for a
novice, but his inexperience as a writer, his lack of form and
technique and deliberateness will hinder his progress, though now and
then he will turn out a tolerable tale by sheer accident. The really
great man will, of course, break through the double barrier, and then
you have a Conrad: that is to say, you have a man who has lived
abundantly and has been able to apply an abundance of art to his
abundance of material. But that is, indeed, rare nowadays, and the
whole moral of the little parable of _A_ and _B_ is that in our own
time it is given but to few men to do both. The one has specialized in
writing, the other in living. And the comparison may be applied, of
course, to the two writers who have stayed at home, even in the same
district. _A_ hasn't much to say, but what he says he says well,
because writing means to him something as a thing in itself; he finds
compensation in the quality of his writings for his lack of rich
material; the whole content of his art is in his form, and that, if not
wholly satisfying, is surely no mean achievement. _B_, on the other
hand, may have a great deal to say, and says it badly. He thinks his