Your challenge will remain unanswered! For who are _you_, to expect a staff of ready geniuses to fill your pages? You should be grateful for one pearl you may find among hundreds of near-jewels. And the world is grateful for one _Ave Maria_ (Schubert) among a thousand near-songs. I preach no gospel of meekness to you, for I know you will turn again and leave your youthful—nay, puerile,—cry of “All or nothing.” It is the cry of the mad—of the foolish, impatient ones! You only want the miracle? You are like the child crying for the moon and, like him, you will accept a round cheese instead. Do come to New York, and I will play more than an hour uninterrupted for you, and perhaps for five minutes (if I am lucky) you will have a miracle. If I am unlucky you will have only a near-miracle, which will be just very good violin playing. * * * * * But what did I say about wanting only the perfection of art and none of its strivings? I said—Art. That includes the strivings, doesn’t it? Surely we needn’t go back to definitions. Ezra Pound has a nice analysis somewhere—to this effect: In such measure as an artist expresses himself truthfully, he will be a good artist; in such measure as he himself exists, he will be a great one. I want a record of the process of that “existing” from as many artists as possible. The process of each will include many things that are not perfection, but who ever told you that perfection and Art are synonymous terms? Some one sent me a sketch, in answer to my editorial, with this note: “You said you wanted Beauty. I am sending you something which I think has it.” I thought it had beauty, too; but it had no Art. What do you people think I meant by the “miracle”? I meant simply those _strivings and achievements_ which show that the great process is really “on.” We published Ben Hecht’s _Night Song_. It had much beauty and no perfection, but it had Art quite apart from either of those elements. Amy Lowell’s poems (not _Off the Turnpike_) have an Art that happens to include perfection. The “miracle” was very much present in _Malmaison_, for instance. Flint’s _London My Beautiful_ has it. The principal trouble is that miracles usually have to be explained to be recognized. It’s like the painter who took a friend to hear Powys. The friend went to hear what Powys had to say—“and I told her what he looked like,” said the painter—_M. C. A._ * * * * * From your letter you sound like a lot of other young things paralyzed by smugness and complacency. You become a one-stringed instrument and you hope to play the violin. If you dared to be an artist, and all that means of madness and impatience and foolishness and crying for the moon, you’d dare promise more than five minutes miracle in an hour. It would be outside of promises.—_jh._ A Word From Real Art _Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago_: