AN EGOTISTICAL CHAPTEE 253 



in his pages, no mere verbal brightness or scholarly 

 attainments will save him. In the best writing, 

 every sentence is filled with the writer's living, 

 breathing quality, just as in the perfected, honey- 

 comb every cell is filled with honey. But how 

 much empty comb there is even in the best books ! 

 I wish to give an account of a bird, or a flower, or 

 of any open-air scene or incident. My whole effort 

 is to see the thing just as it was. I ask myself, 

 "Exactly how did this thing strike my mind? What 

 was prominent ? What was subordinated ? " I have 

 been accused of romancing at times. But it is not 

 true. I set down the thing exactly as it fell out. 

 People say, " I do not see what you do when I take 

 a walk. " But for the most part they do, but the fact 

 as it lies there in nature is crude and raw: it needs 

 to be brought out, to be passed through the heart 

 and mind and presented in appropriate words. This 

 humanizes it and gives it an added charm and sig- 

 nificance. This, I take it, is what is meant by 

 idealizing and interpreting nature. We do not add 

 to or falsely color the facts: we disentangle them, 

 and invest them with the magic of written words. 



To give anything like vitality to one's style, one 

 must divest one's self of any false or accidental or 

 factitious mood or feeling, and get down to his real 

 self, and speak as directly and sincerely as he does 

 about his daily business or affairs, and with as 

 little affectation. One may write from the outside 

 of his mind, as it were, write and write, glibly and 

 learnedly, and make no impression; but when one 



