one should be very considerate of their human feelings. But
addressing them collectively a few plain truths will not give any one
of them much pain. Indeed, almost every individual among them will feel
sure that he or she is an exception to those generalities which apply so
well to the rest.

If I were a literary Pope sending out an Encyclical, I would tell these
inexperienced persons that nothing is so frequent as to mistake an
ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment. The
mechanism of breathing and that of swallowing are very wonderful, and
if one had seen and studied them in his own person only, he might
well think himself a prodigy. Everybody knows these and other
bodily faculties are common gifts; but nobody except editors and
school-teachers and here and there a literary than knows how common
is the capacity of rhyming and prattling in readable prose, especially
among young women of a certain degree of education. In my character of
Pontiff, I should tell these young persons that most of them labored
under a delusion. It is very hard to believe it; one feels so full
of intelligence and so decidedly superior to one's dull relations and
schoolmates; one writes so easily and the lines sound so prettily to
one's self; there are such felicities of expression, just like those we
hear quoted from the great poets; and besides one has been told by
so many friends that all one had to do was to print and be famous!
Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at least nineteen times out of twenty,
yes, ninety-nine times in a hundred.

But as private father confessor, I always allow as much as I can for the
one chance in the hundred. I try not to take away all hope, unless the
case is clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into some
other channel.

Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely. I have counselled more
than one aspirant after literary fame to go back to his tailor's board
or his lapstone. I have advised the dilettanti, whose foolish friends
praised their verses or their stories, to give up all their deceptive
dreams of making a name by their genius, and go to work in the study of
a profession which asked only for the diligent use of average;
ordinary talents. It is a very grave responsibility which these unknown
correspondents throw upon their chosen counsellors. One whom you have
never seen, who lives in a community of which you know nothing, sends
you specimens more or less painfully