e fact is that I have a positive horror of
losing even for one moving moment that full possession of myself which
is the first condition of good service. And I have carried my notion of
good service from my earlier into my later existence. I, who have never
sought in the written word anything else but a form of the Beautiful--I
have carried over that article of creed from the decks of ships to the
more circumscribed space of my desk, and by that act, I suppose, I have
become permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company of
pure esthetes.

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself
mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness
of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not lovable
or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some general
principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know
not. After the middle turn of life's way we consider dangers and joys
with a tranquil mind. So I proceed in peace to declare that I have
always suspected in the effort to bring into play the extremities of
emotions the debasing touch of insincerity. In order to move others
deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond
the bounds of our normal sensibility--innocently enough, perhaps, and of
necessity, like an actor who raises his voice on the stage above the
pitch of natural conversation--but still we have to do that. And surely
this is no great sin. But the danger lies in the writer becoming the
victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity,
and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too
blunt for his purpose--as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent
emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and
giggles.

These may seem selfish considerations; but you can't, in sound morals,
condemn a man taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear duty.
And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however humbly and
imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where his thought
and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined adventures,
there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance or dread of
opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say Nay to his
temptations if not his conscience?

And besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of perfectly
open talk--I think that all a