Yes!I,too,would like to hold the magic wand giving that command over laughter and tears which is declared to be the highest achievement of imaginative literature.Only,to be a great magician one must surrender oneself to occult and irresponsible powers,either outside or within one's breast.We have all heard of simple men selling their souls for love or power to some grotesque devil.The most ordinary intelligence can perceive without much reflection that anything of the sort is bound to be a fool's bargain.I don't lay claim to particular wisdom because of my dislike and distrust of such transactions.
It may be my sea training acting upon a natural disposition to keep good hold on the one thing really mine,but the fact is that I have a positive horror of losing even for one moving moment that full possession of my self which is the first condition of good service.And I have carried my notion of good service from my earlier into my later existence.I,who have never sought in the written word anything else but a form of the Beautiful--I have carried over that article of creed from the decks of ships to the more circumscribed space of my desk,and by that act,I
suppose,I have become permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company of pure esthetes.