are
considerably mistaken when you fancy writing to be a bore, and that I
know infinitely better than you do what you like or dislike."

It is rather singular to find a literary _workman_ talking in this
style. Grattan was not a fertile writer, and, I must suppose, was
never a very industrious one. But he surely must have known that talk
about the pleasures of "composition" was wholly beside the mark.
_That_ may be, often is, pleasant enough, and if the thoughts could
be telephoned from the brain to the types it would all be mighty
agreeable; and the world would be very considerably more overwhelmed
with authorship than it is. It is the "grey goose quill" work, the
necessity for incarnating the creatures of the brain in black and
white, that is the world's protection from this avalanche. And I for
one do not understand how anybody who, eschewing the sunshine and
the fields and the song of birds, or the enjoyment of other people's
brain-work, has glued himself to his desk for long hours, can say
or imagine that his task is, or has been, aught else than hard and
distasteful work, demanding unrelaxing self-denial and industry. And
however fine the frenzy in which the poet's eye may roll while he
builds the lofty line, the work of putting some thousands of them on
the paper when built must be as irksome to him as the penny-a-liner's
task is to _him_--more so, in that the mind of the latter does not
need to be forcibly and painfully restrained from rushing on to the
new pastures which invite it, and curbed to the pack-horse pace of the
quill-driving process.

"You must not," he continues, "allow yourself to be, or even to fancy
that you are tired or tormented, or worn out. Work the mine to the
last. Pump up every drop out of the well. Put money i' thy purse; and
add story after story to that structure of fame, which will enable you
to do as much to that house by the lake side, where I _will_ hope to
see you yet."

* * * * *

He then goes on to speak at considerable length of the society of
Boston, praising it much, yet saying that it is made more charming to
a visitor than to a permanent resident. "In this it differs," he says,
"from almost all the countries I have lived in in Europe, except
Holland."

Speaking of a visit to Washington during the inauguration of General
Harrison, which seems to have delighted him much, he says he travelled
back with a family, "at least with the master an