I have a clerical friend who, being much before the public, is often called upon unexpectedly to reduce moral calculi. Being a man of force, and not a man of power, he never says, “I do not know,” but always boldly faces the problem after this manner: “My friends, this subject naturally divides itself under three heads: firstly,”... Here he states some general commonplace for the first head, and casts about in his mind for the other two; having secured them, he launches forth with much emphasis on some other theme and carries all before him. His swashing and marshal manner makes him everywhere a great success; he is considered one of the most powerful men in his denomination. And I am fully convinced that a painstaking show of system is one of the first essentials in making a favorable impression. We are like the Hebrew salesman who called on a firm who occupied a sixth floor and who, on starting to show his samples, was promptly kicked down stairs; having arrived at the first landing a second man took him in hand and kicked him one flight further; this was continued until his battered form reached the sidewalk, when he picked himself up and admiringly exclaimed, “Mein Gott! vot a system!” So when a rhetorician flashes his “heads” and “divisions” and syllogisms and analyses and figures (that do not lie) upon us, we are so lost in bedazzled admiration that we can only lift up our hands and say, “My God! what a system!” Good work never comes from the effort to be “clear” or “forceful” or “elegant.” Clear to whom, forsooth? and as for force, it has no more place in letters than has speed. Power in Art there surely is, but power is quite a different thing from force. Power is that quality by which change is wrought; it means potentiality, potency. The artist uses only a fraction of his power, and works his changes by the powder that he never explodes; while force means movement, action, exertion, violence, compulsion. Literature is largely the result of feeling. The “hustler” is a man of force; very, very seldom is he a man of power; still rarer is it that he is a man of feeling. The very idea of force precludes tender sensibility and delicate emotion. If I should write on a scrap of paper, “Hate is death, but love is life,” and drop the slip into the street, there might be power in the words, but surely there is no force. And as for elegance, let him who attempts it leave all hope behind; he is already damned. The elegance of an act must spring unconsciously from the gracious soul within. There is no formula.