or less tainted by artificial conditions.

The current of the lives of many persons, I think, is like a muddy
stream. They lack the instinct for health, and hence do not know when
the vital current is foul. They are never really well. They do not look
out for personal inward sanitation. Smokers, drinkers, coffee-tipplers,
gluttonous eaters, diners-out, are likely to lose the sense of perfect
health, of a clear, pure life-current, of which I am thinking. The dew
on the grass, the bloom on the grape, the sheen on the plumage, are
suggestions of the health that is within the reach of most of us.

The least cloud or film in my mental skies mars or stops my work. I
write with my body quite as much as with my mind. How persons whose
bread of life is heavy, so to speak,--no lightness or buoyancy or
airiness at all,--can make good literature is a mystery to me; or those
who stimulate themselves with drugs or alcohol or coffee. I would live
so that I could get tipsy on a glass of water, or find a spur in a whiff
of morning air.

Such as my books are, the bloom of my life is in them; no morbidity, or
discontent, or ill health, or angry passion, has gone to their making.
The iridescence of a bird's plumage, we are told, is not something
extraneous; it is a prismatic effect. So the color in my books is not
paint; it is health. It is probably nothing to brag of; much greater
books have been the work of confirmed invalids. All I can say is that
the minds of these inspired invalids have not seemed to sustain so close
a relation to their bodies as my mind does to my body. Their powers seem
to have been more purely psychic. Look at Stevenson--almost bedridden
all his life, yet behold the felicity of his work! How completely his
mind must have been emancipated from the infirmities of his body! It is
clearly not thus with me. My mind is like a flame that depends entirely
upon the good combustion going on in the body. Hence, I can never write
in the afternoon, because this combustion is poorest then.

Life has been to me simply an opportunity to learn and enjoy, and,
through my books, to share my enjoyment with others. I have had no other
ambition. I have thirsted to know things, and to make the most of them.
The universe is to me a grand spectacle that fills me with awe and
wonder and joy, and with intense curiosity. I have had no such religious
burden to bear as my fathers did--the conviction of sin, the struggle,
the agony, the desp