One editor, for instance, finds a convict in a prison who can scribble. There is glory in discovery. He proclaims him. Commercialized publicity begins. He is likened to Dante in exile, and Ugo Foscolo. Country papers, having no opinions, copy abundantly, then praise. Soon it falls flat, because considered as poetry, its value was nil. The editor was not interested _in poetry_, but only in himself. The writing good or bad was not of the slightest importance, in his judging. If a girl broncho buster on an Arizona plain is good at broncho busting, she is asked to write her opinion of the Apollo Belvedere. This is excellent illustration of what is meant; the thing _per se_ does not count. In France it is the thing that does count. I once knew a plaintive, romantic lady whose ambition was to be heir to something or somebody. Editors in America have the same romantic itch, only in their case, it is itch to be a _discoverer_. I am interested in Conrad in criticism. He is troubled by Balzac, penetrated by the perfection of Maupassant, haunted by the heights of Flaubert. He could not accommodate himself to looking upon his own work in the furious emotions they create. But why should he wish to drag Conrad into such company? Only the Latin mind, I suppose, and Bielinsky, have achieved impersonal criticism. I had a wonderful time reading Heine! In my cheap edition the books cost three cents, or five. I wish I could have it over again! My mother knew that I was good-for-nothing, so she did not try to make anything out of me. It was good sense on her part. She let me idle and read. In reading I was out of the way, quiet, and as usual, useless. At the same time I was the scandal of a reasonable, hard-headed family who liked to work, and who knew without doubt in which direction to go. When I was learning Russian minus a teacher, at eighteen, they, my aunts, cousins, used to peer at me through windows, door cracks, then whisper tragically to each other: “She has looked at one page an hour! No one but a fool would do that!” To them I have remained a fool. My grandmothers loved me too much to call me that. I have since wondered if in love there be not wisdom, distilled genius of perception. Love always dwells somewhere in the realms of light. What was reading Russian at eighteen, in comparison with making buttonholes that were not round like hogs’ eyes at both corners, or cream puffs that did not split? When the women could not think of any fresh gossip, they fabricated a new story about me, my laziness. To them _work_ was _hand-work_. Happy days of life, however, were spent in a lonely, ugly, sun-and-wind-beaten, prairie village, reading in a dozen or more languages, the word-masters of the world, while the neighbors invented hair-raising tales of my laziness. I was scandal of the village! Sense of justice, very likely, is rare!