But I had to tell him that it wanted dignity of incident and grace of
narrative, that there was no atmosphere to it, nothing of the light that
never was and so forth. I did not say this in these very words, but I
gave him to understand, without being too hard upon him, that he had
better not desert his honest toil in pursuit of the poet's bays. This,
it must be confessed, was a rather discouraging case. A young person
like this may pierce, as the Frenchmen say, by and by, but the chances
are all the other way.
I advise aimless young men to choose some profession without needless
delay, and so get into a good strong current of human affairs, and find
themselves bound up in interests with a compact body of their fellow-men.
I advise young women who write to me for counsel,--perhaps I do not
advise them at all, only sympathize a little with them, and listen to
what they have to say (eight closely written pages on the average, which
I always read from beginning to end, thinking of the widow's cruse and
myself in the character of Elijah) and--and--come now, I don't believe
Methuselah would tell you what he said in his letters to young ladies,
written when he was in his nine hundred and sixty-ninth year.
But, dear me! how much work all this private criticism involves! An
editor has only to say "respectfully declined," and there is the end of
it.
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