THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



my own way in the world. I was fortunate in my 

 youth in having escaped the daily paper, and espe- 

 cially the Sunday paper and the comic supplement, 

 and the flood of cheap fiction that now submerges 

 the reading public. 



It is a question whether in escaping a college 

 education I made a hit or a miss. I am inclined to 

 the opinion that a little systematic training, espe- 

 cially in science, would have been a gain, though 

 the systematic grind in literature which the college 

 puts its students through I am glad to have escaped. 

 I thank Heaven that in literature I have never had 

 to dissect Shakespeare or Milton, or any other great 

 poet, in the classroom, and that I have never had 

 to dissect any animal in the laboratory. I have had 

 the poets in their beautiful and stimulating unity 

 and wholeness, and I have had the animals in the 

 fields and woods in the joy of their natural activities. 

 In my literary career I have escaped trying to write 

 for the public or for editors; I have written for my- 

 self. I have not asked, "What does the public 

 want?" I have only asked, "What do I want to 

 say? What is there in my heart craving for expres- 

 sion? What have I lived or felt or thought that is 

 my own, and has its root in my inmost being? " 



I have few of the aptitudes of the scholar, and 



fewer yet of the methodical habits and industry of 



the man of business. I live in books a certain part 



of each day, but less as a student of books than as a 



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