Here was the place and now was the time for self-expression, for creative work, for the artistic interpretation of the life and manners of his own people. If he was to do anything, be anybody, attain distinction, count among writers of his era, he knew that his effort lay here—here where he was born and lived his youth to manhood—here where the tension of feverish living never relaxed, where a young, high-mettled, high-strung nation was clamouring and fretting and quarrelling and forging ahead, now floundering aside after some will-o’-the-wisp, now scaling stupendous moral heights, noisy, half-educated, half-civilized, suspicious, flippant, bragging, sentimental, yet iron-hearted, generous and brave. Here, on the nation’s eastern edge, where the shattering dissonance of the iron city never ceased by day; where its vast, metallic vibration left the night eternally unquiet and the very sky quivering with the blows of sound under the stars’ incessant sparkle—here, after all, was where he belonged. Here he must have his say. Here lay his destiny. And, for the sake of all this which was his, and for no other reason, was attainment and distinction worth his effort. All this good and evil, all this abominable turmoil and futile discord, all this relentless, untiring struggle deep in the dusty, twilight cañons and steel towers with their thin skins of stone—all the passions of these people, and their motives and their headlong strivings and their creeds and sentiments, false or true or misguided—these things were his to interpret, to understand, to employ. For these people, and for their cities, for their ambitions, desires, aspirations—for the vast nation of which they formed their local fragment—only a native-born could be their interpreter, their eulogist, their defender, their apologist, and their prophet. And for their credit alone was there any reason for his life’s endeavour. No cultured, suave product of generations of Europe’s cultivation could handle these people and these themes convincingly and with the subtle comprehension of authority. Rod and laurel, scalpel and palm should be touched only by the hand of the native-born. His pretty Countess had said to him once: "Only what you have seen, what you have lived and seen others live; only what you detect from the clear-minded, cool, emotionless analysis of your own people, is worth the telling. Only this carries conviction. And, when told with all the cunning simplicity and skill of an artist, it carries with it that authority which leaves an impression indelible! Go back to your own people—if you really have anything to write worth reading." Thinking of these things, he locked his door on rooms now more or less in order, and went out into the street.