being almost a genius, he overlooks this, but his fame is
based upon it. He devoted his old age to trying to train young men into
artists by teaching them to despise their youth in their youth, because,
when he was an old man, he despised his.

What seems to be necessary is to strike a balance, in one's reading.

It's all well enough; indeed, there's nothing better than having one's
originality ridden down. One wants it ridden down half the time. The
trouble comes in making provision for catching up, for getting one's
breath after it. I have found, for instance, that it has become
absolutely necessary so far as I am concerned, if I am to keep my little
mind's start in the world, to begin the day by not reading the newspaper
in the morning. Unless I can get headway--some thought or act or cry or
joy of my own--something that is definitely in my own direction first,
there seems to be no hope for me all day long. Most people, I know,
would not agree to this. They like to take a swig of all-space, a glance
at everybody while the world goes round, before they settle down to
their own little motor on it. They like to feel that the world is all
right before they go ahead. So would I, but I have tried it again--and
again. The world is too much for me in the morning. My own little motor
comes to a complete stop. I simply want to watch the Big One going round
and round. I cannot seem to stop somehow--begin puttering once more with
my Little One. If I begin at all, I have to begin at once. In my heart I
feel the Big One over me all the while, circling over me, blessing me.
But I keep from noticing. I know no other way, and drive on. The world
is getting to be--has to be--to me a purely afternoon or evening affair.
I have a world of my own for morning use. I hold to it, one way or the
other, with a cheerful smile or like grim death, until the clock says
twelve and the sun turns the corner, and the book drops. It does not
seem to make very much difference what kind of a world I am in, or what
is going on in it, so that it is all my own, and the only way I know to
do, is to say or read or write or use the things first in it which make
it my own the most. The one thing I want in the morning is to let my
soul light its own light, appropriate some one thing, glow it through
with itself. When I have satisfied the hunger for making a bit of the
great world over into my world, I am ready for the world as a
world--streets and newspapers of