“It is not well, ma'am, to push the bird off because he can't sit safe on the edge of the nest.” “Perhaps you are right A failure then would have stood in the way of your coming fame.” “Oh, for that, ma'am, believe me, I do not care a short straw.” “What do you not care for?” “For fame.” “That is wrong, Andrew. We ought to care what our neighbors think of us.” “My neighbors did not set me to do the work, and I did not seek their praise in doing it. Their friendship I prize dearly--more than tongue can tell.” “You can not surely be so conceited, Andrew, as to think nobody capable of judging your work.” “Far from it, ma'am. But you were speaking of fame, and that does not come from any wise judgment.” “Then what do you write for, if you care nothing for fame? I thought that was what all poets wrote for.” “So the world thinks; and those that do sometimes have their reward.” “Tell me then what you write for?” “I write because I want to tell something that makes me glad and strong. I want to say it, and so try to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole. I was once at an oratorio, and that taught me the shape of a poem. In a pause of the music, I seemed all at once to see Handel's heavy countenance looking out of his great wig, as he sat putting together his notes, ordering about in his mind, and fixing in their places with his pen, his drums, and pipes, and fiddles, and roaring bass, and flageolets, and hautboys--all to open the door for the thing that was plaguing him with the confusion of its beauty. For I suppose even Handel did not hear it all clear and plain at first, but had to build his orchestra into a mental organ for his mind to let itself out by, through the many music holes, lest it should burst with its repressed harmonic delights. He must have felt an agonized need to set the haunting angels of sound in obedient order and range, responsive to the soul of the thing, its one ruling idea! I saw him with his white rapt face, looking like a prophet of the living God sent to speak out of the heart of the mystery of truth! I saw him as he sat staring at the paper before him, scratched all over as with the fury of a holy anger at his own impotence, and his soul communed with heavenliest harmonies! Ma'am, will any man persuade me that Handel at such a moment was athirst for fame? or that the desire to please a house full or world full of such as heard his oratorios, gave him the power to write his music? No, ma'am! he was filled, not with the longing for sympathy, and not even with the good desire to give delight, but with the music itself. It was crying in him to get out, and he heard it crying, and could not rest till he had let it out; and every note that dropped from his pen was a chip struck from the granite wall between the song-birds in their prison-nest, and the air of their liberty. Creation is God's self-wrought freedom.