ferent afterward--a man who could idly announce
that he had met the poet Shelley and not accept it as the big event of a
period. Browning described his dismay at the other in the story of
finding the eagle feather. He did not know the name of the moor; perhaps
men had made much of it; perhaps significant matters of history had been
enacted on that moor, but they were nothing to the mystic. One square of
earth there, the size of a human hand, was sacred to him, because it was
just on that spot that he found an eagle's feather.

I stood waist-high to Conan Doyle years ago--was speechless and outraged
that groups of people who had listened to him speak, could gather about
afterward, talk and laugh familiarly, beg his autograph.... Had he
spoken a word or a sentence to me, it would not have been writ in
water.... There is no hate nor any love like that which the men who are
called to the same task have for each other. The masters of the crafts
know each other; the mystics of the arts know each other.

The preparation for the tasks of the world is potential in the breasts
of the children behind us. For each there is a magic key; and that man
holds it who has covered the journey, or part of it, which the soul of a
child perceives it must set out upon soon. The presence of a good
workman will awaken the potential proclivity of the child's nature, as
no other presence can do. Every autobiography tells the same story--of a
certain wonder-moment of youth, when the ideal appeared, and all
energies were turned thereafter to something concrete which that ideal
signified. Mostly the "great man" did not know what he had done for the
boy.... I would have the great man know. I would have him seek to
perform this miracle every day.

There's always a hush in the room when some one comes to me saying,
"There is a young man who dreams of writing. He is very strange. He does
not speak about it. He is afraid to show what he has done. I wanted to
bring him to you--but he would not come. I think he did not dare."

Formerly I would say, "Bring him over some time," but that seldom
brought the thing about. A man should say, "_Lead me to him now_!..."
Those who want to write for money and for the movies come. They put
stamps upon letters they write. God knows they are not ashamed to come
and ask for help, and explain their symptoms of yearning and show their
structure of desire.... The one who dares not come; who dares not mail
the letter he has