of it was rot, and some of it was excellent; but I didn't know
why, and no one ever told me why."

"You thought all that?" said he. "Well, that's more hopeful! Have you ever
done any essay work?"

"Yes," I said, "and that was the worst of all--no one ever showed me how to
do it in my own way, but always in some one else's way."

He sate a little in silence. Then he said: "But mind you, that's not all! I
don't think writing is the end of life. The real point is to feel the
things, to understand the business, to have ideas about life. I don't want
people to learn how to write interestingly about things in which they are
not interested--but to be interested first, and then to write if they can.
I like to turn out a good writer, who can say what he feels and believes.
But I'm just as pleased when a man tells me that writing is rubbish, and
that he is going away to do something real. The real--that's what I care
about! I don't want men to come and pick up grains of truth and reality,
and work them into their stuff. I have turned out a few men like that, and
those are my worst failures. You have got to care about ideas, if you come
here, and to get the ideas into shape. You have got to learn what is
beautiful and what is not, because the only business of a real writer is
with beauty--not a sickly exotic sort of beauty, but the beauty of health
and strength and generous feeling. I can't have any humbugs here, though I
have sent out some humbugs. It's a hard life this, and a tiring life;
though if you are the right sort of fellow, you will get plenty of fun out
of it. But we don't waste time here; and if a man wastes time, out he
goes."

"I believe I can work as hard as anyone," I said, "though I have shown no
signs of it--and anyhow, I should like to try. And I do really want to
learn how to distinguish between things, how to know what matters. No one
has ever shown me how to do that!"

"That's all right!" he said, "But are you sure you don't want simply to
make a bit of a name--to be known as a clever man? It's very convenient,
you know, in England, to have a label. Because I want you clearly to
understand that this place of mine has nothing whatever to do with that. I
take no stock in what is called success. This is a sort of monastery, you
know; and the worst of some monasteries is that they cultivate dreams.
That's a beautiful thing in its way, but it isn't what I aim at. I don't
want men to drug themselves with dreams