"So I was at one time, but I got out of it. The work was drying me up too fast. The concern is run by a lot of cusses who have failed in various branches of literature themselves, and undertake, in consequence, to make it unpleasant for every one else who tries to write anything. I got so that I could sling as cynical a quill as the rest of them. But the trick is an easy one and hardly worth learning. It's a great fraud, this business of reviewing. Here's a man of learning, for instance, who has spent years of research on a particular work. He has collected a large library, perhaps, on his subject; knows more about it than any one else living. Then along comes some insolent little whipper-snapper,--like me,--whose sole knowledge of the matter in hand is drawn from the very book that he pretends to criticise, and patronizes the learned author in a book notice. No, I got out of it; I hadn't the cheek." "I bought your book,"[A] said I, "as soon as it came out." [Footnote A: Dialogues and Romances. By E. Clay. New York: Pater & Sons, 1874.] "That's more than the public did." "Yes, and I read it, too." "No! Did you, now? That's true friendship. Well, how did you like it? Did you get your money's worth?" I hesitated a moment and then answered: "It was clever, of course. Anything that you write would be sure to be that. But it didn't appear to get down to hard-pan or to take a firm grip on life--did it?" "Ah, that's what the critics said,--only they've got a set of phrases for expressing it. They said it was amateurish, that it was in a falsetto key, etc." "Well, how does it strike you, yourself? You know that it didn't come out of the deep places of your nature, don't you? You feel that you've got better behind?" "Oh, I don't know. A man does what he can. I rather think it's the best I can do at present." "Why don't you go at some more serious work; some _magnum opus_ that would bring your whole strength into play?" "A _magnum opus_, my dear fellow!" replied Clay, with a shade of irritation in his voice. "You talk as if a _magnum opus_ could be done for the wishing. Why don't _you_ do a _magnum opus_, then?" "Why don't _I_? Oh, I'm not a literary fellow--never professed to be. What a question!" "Well, no more am I, perhaps. I don't think any better of the stuff that I scribble than you do. It's all an experiment with me. I'm trying my brushes--trying my brushes. Perhaps I may be able to do something stronger some day, and perhaps not. But at all events I sha'n't force my mood. I shall wait for my inspiration. One thing I've noticed, that as a man grows older he loses his spontaneity and gets more critical with himself. I could do more, no doubt, if I would only let myself go. But I'm like this meerschaum here,--a hard piece and slow in coloring."