"I cannot understand," she said, "how it is that writers will clamor for recognition, and abuse the public for not welcoming them with enthusiasm, and yet will not give the public what they know that the public wants. So many people seem to want just their own sort of art, but to want money, too. Now, I wouldn't write for a million dollars some of those things that are called 'best sellers.' But I cannot see why a writer who is avowedly writing for the public should think it beneath him to treat the themes in which the public is interested. The greatest tragedy of literature is the writer who persists in trying to give the public what it does not want. Think of poor Gissing, for instance, dying embittered because he couldn't sell his work!" Mrs. Norris's conviction that a writer should use the material around him is so strong that she seems actually to be pained by the thought of all the excellent things for stories that are going to waste. I asked her if literature ever could come from apartment-houses. She said: "Of course it can! There is no reason why there shouldn't be good stories and novels of apartment-house life. One reason why we are not writing more and better stories of the life around us is because we are living that life so intensely--too intensely. We live in this country so close to our income that the problem of earning money makes us lose sight of the essentials of life. It would be a fine thing for us, mentally and spiritually, if we should live on less than we do. If, for example, a family that found it was in receipt of a few hundred dollars more a year than before should decide, therefore, to live under a simpler scale than before, to do away with some really worthless luxuries, what a fine thing that would be!" Of course many young writers come to Mrs. Norris for advice. And some of them excellently illustrate the tendency which she deprecates, the tendency to write about the unknown instead of the familiar. "I was talking the other day to a young girl of my acquaintance who is a costume model," she said. "She has literary aspirations. Now, her life itself has been an interesting story--her rise from a shopgirl to her present position. And every now and then she will say something to me that is a most interesting revelation--something that indicates the rich store of experience that she might, if she would, draw upon in her stories. On one occasion she said to me, 'I went home and put my shoe-drawer in order.' "'What do you mean?' I asked. 'What is your shoe-drawer?' "'Why, my shoe-drawer!' she answered. 'You see, we costume models have to have a drawer full of shoes, because we must change our shoes to match every costume.'