No doubt the chances against literary
aspirants are very great. It is so easy to aspire,--and to begin!
A man cannot make a watch or a shoe without a variety of tools and
many materials. He must also have learned much. But any young lady
can write a book who has a sufficiency of pens and paper. It can
be done anywhere; in any clothes--which is a great thing; at any
hours--to which happy accident in literature I owe my success.
And the success, when achieved, is so pleasant! The aspirants, of
course, are very many; and the experienced councillor, when asked
for his candid judgment as to this or that effort, knows that among
every hundred efforts there will be ninety-nine failures. Then the
answer is so ready: "My dear young lady, do darn your stockings;
it will be for the best." Or perhaps, less tenderly, to the male
aspirant: "You must earn some money, you say. Don't you think
that a stool in a counting-house might be better?" The advice will
probably be good advice,--probably, no doubt, as may be proved by
the terrible majority of failures. But who is to be sure that he
is not expelling an angel from the heaven to which, if less roughly
treated, he would soar,--that he is not dooming some Milton to be
mute and inglorious, who, but for such cruel ill-judgment, would
become vocal to all ages?
The answer to all this seems to be ready enough.
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