in the least ferocious in
appearance, and not even _old_! The revulsion from my fears and anxieties
was so swift and complete that, you will remember, I gave both hands in
salutation, and had I possessed a miraculous third, you should have had
that also.

I am so pleased to have you confirm my judgment of Howells's novel; and
that I am to have more books for review. I doubt, however, if Mr. Howells
will ever reap the benefit of my criticisms, for not long since I read a
note from him saying that he never looked into _The Gazette_. You must
already have given offence by doubting his literary infallibility.

But on the whole you question the wisdom of my ambition to "give my life
to literature." As to that I am inclined to follow Ellen Thorneycroft
Fowler's opinion: "Writing is like flirting,--if you can't do it, nobody
can teach you; and if you can do it, nobody can keep you from doing it."
With a certain literary aspirant I know, writing is even more like
flirting than that,--an artful folly with literature which will never rise
to the dignity of a wedding sacrifice. She could no more give herself
seriously to the demands of such a profession than a Southern mockingbird
can take a serious view of music. He makes it quite independently of mind,
gets his inspiration from the fairies, steals his notes, and dedicates the
whole earth to the sky every morning with a green-tree ballad, utterly
frivolous. Such a performance, my dear Mr. Towers, can never be termed a
"sacrifice"; rather it is the wings and tail of humour expressed in a
song. But who shall say the dear little wag has no vocation because his
small feather-soul is expressed by a minuet instead of an anthem?

Therefore do not turn your editorial back upon me because I am incapable
of the more earnest sacrifice. Even if I only chirrup a green-tree ballad,
I shall need a chorister to aid me in winning those "laughing honours of
society." And your supervision is all the more necessary, since, as you
said to me, I live in a section where the literary point of view is more
sentimental than accurate. This is accounted for, not by a lack of native
wit, but by the fact that we have no scholarship or purely intellectual
foundations. We are romanticists, but not students in life or art. We make
no great distinctions between ideality and reality because with us
existence itself is one long cheerful delusion. Now, while I suffer from
these limitations more or less, my ignoran