least, to your tolerance--is gone and nothing is
left but a pallid, stiff and repulsive cadaver.

Such is "talk" almost invariably, as you see it lying in state in an
"interview". The interviewer seldom tries to tell one how a thing was
said; he merely puts in the naked remark and stops there. When one
writes for print his methods are very different. He follows forms which
have but little resemblance to conversation, but they make the reader
understand what the writer is trying to convey. And when the writer is
making a story and finds it necessary to report some of the talk of his
characters observe how cautiously and anxiously he goes at that risky
and difficult thing. "If he had dared to say that thing in my presence,"
said Alfred, "taking a mock heroic attitude, and casting an arch glance
upon the company, blood would have flowed."

"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said Hawkwood,
with that in his eye which caused more than one heart in that guilty
assemblage to quake, "blood would have flowed."

"If he had dared to say that thing in my presence," said the paltry
blusterer, with valor on his tongue and pallor on his lips, "blood would
have flowed."

So painfully aware is the novelist that naked talk in print conveys no
meaning that he loads, and often overloads, almost every utterance
of his characters with explanations and interpretations. It is a loud
confession that print is a poor vehicle for "talk"; it is a recognition
that uninterpreted talk in print would result in confusion to the
reader, not instruction.

Now, in your interview, you have certainly been most accurate; you have
set down the sentences I uttered as I said them. But you have not a word
of explanation; what my manner was at several points is not indicated.
Therefore, no reader can possibly know where I was in earnest and
where I was joking; or whether I was joking altogether or in earnest
altogether. Such a report of a conversation has no value. It can
convey many meanings to the reader, but never the right one. To add
interpretations which would convey the right meaning is a something
which would require--what? An art so high and fine and difficult that no
possessor of it would ever be allowed to waste it on interviews.

No; spare the reader, and spare me; leave the whole interview out; it
is rubbish. I wouldn't talk in my sleep if I couldn't talk better than
that.

If you wish to print anything print this letter; it ma