, because during all the
writing of it one has kept, as it were, tensely and constrainedly at a
certain point; and so when freedom comes, the thought leaps hurriedly
forward, like a weight lifted by an elastic cord that has been
stretched almost to breaking. "Can I ever have thought or felt so?" the
mind says to itself, scanning the pages; and thus a book, which is
mistaken for the very soul of a man, is often no more like the man
himself than a dusty, sunburnt picture that represents what he was long
years before.

But to-day my only thought is that the little companion whom I loved so
well, who has walked and sate, eaten and drunk, gone in and out with
me, silent and smiling, has left me and departed to try his fortune in
the rough world. How will he fare? how will he be greeted? And yet I
know that when he returns to me, saying, "I am a part of yourself," I
shall be apt to deny it. For whereas now, if my child is lame, or
feeble or pitiful or blind, I love him the better that he is not strong
and active; when he returns I shall have a clear eye for his faults and
weaknesses, and shall wish him other than he will be.

Sometimes I have talked with the writers of books, and they have told
me of the misery and agony that the composition of a book has brought
them. They speak of hot and cold fits; of times when they write
fiercely and eagerly, and of times when they cannot set down a line to
their mind; days of despair when they hate and despise the book; days
when they cannot satisfy themselves about a single word: all this is
utterly unknown to me; once embarked upon a book, I have neither
hesitation nor fear. To sit down to it, day after day, and to write, is
like sitting down to talk with one's nearest friend, where no
concealment or diplomacy is necessary, but where one can say exactly
what comes into the mind, with no fear of being misunderstood. I have
not the smallest difficulty about expressing exactly as I wish to
express it, whatever is in my mind. When I fail, it is because the
thought itself is incomplete, imperfect, obscure; yet as I write,
weariness and dissatisfaction are unknown. I cannot imagine how anyone
can write a book without loving the toil, such as it is. Probably that
is because I am indolent or pleasure-loving. I do not see how work of
this kind can be done at all in a spirit of heaviness, it may be a fine
moral discipline to do a dreaded thing heavily and faithfully; but what
hope is there of