read of his was called "One More Turn of the Screw," but what
the screw was, or what the turn was, or whether anybody got pinched or
squeezed, or what it was all about, I have not the slightest idea. He
wrote about his visit here, his trip to Boston, to Albany, to New
York, but which town he was writing about you could not infer from the
context. He had the gift of a rich, choice vocabulary, but he wove it
into impenetrable, though silken, veils that concealed more than they
revealed. When replying to his correspondents on the typewriter, he
would even apologize for "the fierce legibility of the type."

* * * * *

The contrast between the "singing-robes and the overalls of
Journalism" is true and striking. Good and true writing no magazine or
newspaper editor will blue-pencil. But "fine" writing is a different
thing--a style that is conscious of itself, a style in which the
thought is commonplace and the language studied and ornate, every
judicious editor will blue-pencil. Downrightness and sententiousness
are prime qualities; brevity, concreteness, spontaneity--in fact, all
forms of genuine expression--help make literature. You know the
genuine from the spurious, gold from pinchbeck, that's the rub. The
secret of sound writing is not in the language, but in the mind or
personality behind the language. The dull writer and the inspired
writer use, or may use, the same words, and the product will be gold
in the one and lead in the other.

* * * * *

Dana's book ["Two Years Before the Mast"] is a classic because it took
no thought of being a classic. It is a plain, unvarnished tale, not
loaded up with tedious descriptions. It is all action, a perpetual
drama in which the sea, the winds, the seamen, the sails--mainsail,
main royal, foresail--play the principal parts.

There is no book depicting life on the sea to compare with it. Lately
I have again tried to find the secret of its charm. In the first
place, it is a plain, unvarnished tale, no attempt at fine writing in
it. All is action from cover to cover. It is full of thrilling,
dramatic scenes. In fact, it is almost a perpetual drama in which the
sea, the winds, the storms, the sails, and the sailors play their
parts. Each sail, from the smallest to the greatest, has its own
character and its own part to play; sometimes many of them, sometimes
few are upon the stage at once. Occasionally all the canvas