Write, if you _must_; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living. Do anything honest, but do not write, unless God calls you, and publishers want you, and people read you, and editors claim you. Respect the market laws. Lean on nobody. Trust the common sense of an experienced publisher to know whether your manuscript is worth something or nothing. Do not depend on influence. Editors do not care a drop of ink for influence. What they want is good material, and the fresher it is, the better. An editor will pass by an old writer, any day, for an unknown and gifted new one, with power to say a good thing in a fresh way. Make your calling and election sure. Do not flirt with your pen. Emerson's phrase was, "toiling terribly." Nothing less will hint at the grinding drudgery of a life spent in living "by your brains." Inspiration is all very well; but "genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains." Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand. Unless you are prepared to work like a slave at his galley, for the toss-up chance of a freedom which may be denied him when his work is done, do not write. There are some pleasant things about this way of spending a lifetime, but there are no easy ones. There are privileges in it, but there are heart-ache, mortification, discouragement, and an eternal doubt. Had one not better have made bread or picture-frames, run a motor, or invented a bicycle tire? Time alone--perhaps one might say, eternity--can answer. * * * * * [Footnote 5: "A sin once committed, always _deserves_ punishment; and, as long as strict _Justice_ is administered, the sin _must_ be punished. Unless there be an Atonement, strict Justice _must_ be administered; that is, Sin must be punished forever; but, on the ground of the Atonement, _Grace_ may be administered, instead of _Justice_, and then the sinner may be pardoned."] [Illustration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON AT THE AGE OF FOURTEEN. From a photograph by Fradelle & Young, London.] LOST YOUTH. BY R.L. STEVENSON. Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye. Mull was astern, Egg on the port, Rum on the starboard bow; Glory of youth glowed in his soul: Where is that glory now? Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, Say, could that lad be I? Merry of soul he sailed on a day Over the sea to Skye. Give me again all that was there, Give me the sun that shone! Give me the eyes, give me soul, Give me the lad that's gone!