"Yes, to the men who do them, he's the big laughing figure behind their work, but the public doesn't seem to know.... Of course, Herman has faults--Japan currents of faults--but they only warm him to a white man's heart. Do you know, I like to think of him in a wide, windy room, tearing off his story long-hand, upon yard square sheets, grinning like an ogre at the soul-play, the pages of copy settling ankle-deep upon the floor. There's no taint of over-breeding in the unborn thing, no curse of compression, no aping Addison--nothing but Melville, just blown in with the gale, reeking with a big story which must be shed, before he blows out again, with straining cordage booming in his ears. He harnesses Art. He man-handles Power, makes it grovel and play circus. 'Here it is,' he seems to say at the end. 'Take it or leave it. I'm rotting here ashore.'" "You ought to dictate reviews like that, Mr. Reifferscheid," Paula could not help saying, though she knew he would be disconcerted. He colored, turned back to his work, directing her to take her choice from the shelf of fresh books.... On the car going back, Paula opened Charter's letter. Her fingers trembled, because she had been in a happy and daring mood five or six days before when she wrote the letter to which this was the reply. ... Do you know, I really like to write to you? I feel untrammelled--turned loose in the meadows. It seems when I start an idea--that you've grasped it as soon as it is clear to me. Piled sentences after that are unnecessary. It's a real joy to write this way, as spirits commune. It wouldn't do at all for the blessed multitude. You have to be a mineral and a vegetable and an animal, all in a paragraph, to get the whole market. But how generous the dear old multitude is--(if the writer has suffered enough)--with its bed and board and lamplight.... I have been scored and salted so many times that I heal like an earth-worm. Tell me, can scar-tissue ever be so fine? Fineness--that's the one excellent feature of being human! There's no other reason for being--no other meaning or reason for atomic affinity or star-hung space. True, the great Conceiver of Refining Thought seems pleased to take all eternity to play in....