the stuff
that I scribble than you do. It's all an experiment with me. I'm
trying my brushes--trying my brushes. Perhaps I may be able to do
something stronger some day, and perhaps not. But at all events I
sha'n't force my mood. I shall wait for my inspiration. One thing I've
noticed, that as a man grows older he loses his spontaneity and gets
more critical with himself. I could do more, no doubt, if I would only
let myself go. But I'm like this meerschaum here,--a hard piece and
slow in coloring."

"Well, meanwhile you might do something in the line of scholarship, a
history or a volume of critical essays--'Hours with the Poets,' or
something of that kind, that would bring in the results of your
reading. Have you seen Brainard's book? It seemed to me work that was
worth doing. But you could do something of the same kind, only much
better, without taking your hands out of your pockets."

Brainard was a painstaking classmate of ours, who had been for some
years Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, English Literature,
and European History, in a Western university, and had recently
published a volume entitled "Theism and Pantheism in the Literature of
the English Renaissance," which was well spoken of, and was already in
its third edition.

"Yes, I've seen the stuff," said Clay. "My unhappy country swarms with
that sort of thing: books about books, and books about other books
about books--like the big fleas and little fleas. It's not literature;
it's a parasitic growth that infests literature. I always say to
myself, with the melancholy Jaques, whenever I have to look over a
book by Brainard or any such fellow, 'I think of as many matters as
he; but I give Heaven thanks and make no boast of them.' No, I don't
care to add anything to that particular rubbish heap. You know Emerson
said that the worst poem is better than the best criticism of it. The
trouble with me is that what I want to do I can't do--at present; what
I can do I don't think it worth while to do--worth my while, at
least. Some one else may do it and get the credit and welcome."

"But you do a good deal of work that you don't care about, as it is,"
I objected.

"Of course. A man must live, and so I do the nearest thing and the one
that pays quickest. I got eighty dollars, now, for that last screed in
'The Reservoir.'"

"But," I persisted, "I thought that money-making had no part in your
scheme. You could make more money in a dozen other business