tten him as often as he has
written me, but that is the way I do everything in life. If I were a
preacher I wouldn't hold my job long, for the thing I started on would
have about as much connection with the thing I ended with as the moon
with milk. Not that that would be unusual, for a good many ministers
have the same failing and skip about just as I do, but my trouble would
be in hopping from one subject to another so fast that the congregation
would be in Jericho one minute and in Jerusalem the next and never know
how it made the jump. As I am never going to be a preacher, I am not
worrying about my unfitness to be one, but what does worry me sometimes
is that my hopping habit will be my ruination when I begin to write a
book. My characters will never keep together, or do the proper things
or say suitable ones. They will probably get so jumbled up no one will
be able to tell which is the chief hero or heroine, and there will be
no logical development at all, which my English teacher insists is an
elemental requirement of fiction if it isn't of life. I thought this
summer I was going to begin some sort of book just for practice, but by
the time I get through putting down the things I scribble about the
day's doings, and write to Father and send my weekly letter to Mother
and the girls, and run off something every now and then to Billy, and
answer the notes I get from Whythe and some of the kiddies around here
who think they're grown, I don't feel like writing on a book, which is
why I haven't begun one yet. I will never be able to write one that
tells of dark deeds and treacherous doings and love-sick lovers, or one
which has suspended interest or rapid action and narrow escapes, for I
know very little of such things, and I will never do much with plots.
The people I know do not have very exciting lives and here in
Twickenham they trot along and do the same thing over and over, and one
day is very much like the other, so there isn't much inspiration for a
thriller, and thrillers are the style in books to-day. That is one
reason I thought I had better wait until the style changes and while
waiting enjoy myself with the people here who know how to do that
better than any people on earth. I'm enjoying myself all right.

Of course, now that I am in love, I could write volumes on how
scrumptious it is and how floppy I feel whenever I see Whythe,
especially when he keeps his deep, dark eyes on me as if he were tryin