ll, for some ruts are safe. When we
are buried deep, they keep us from toppling over. This may be a sort of
weak philosophy I am trying to teach you, but it is the happiest. If I
can save any man from self-delusion, I want to do it. I 'll tell you
why. When I was at school some fool put it into my head that I could
write. I hardly know how it came about. I began scribbling of my own
accord and for my own amusement. Sometimes I showed the things to my
friend, who was a fool: he bade me keep on, saying that I had talent. I
did n't believe it at first. But when a fellow keeps dinging at another
with one remark, after a while he grows to believe it, especially when
it is pleasant. It is vastly easy to believe what we want to believe. So
I came to think that I could write, and my soul was fired with the
ambition to make a name for myself in literature. When I should have
been turning Virgil into English for class-room, I was turning out more
or less deformed verse of my own, or rapt in the contemplation of some
plot for story or play. But somehow I got through school without a
decided flunk. In the mean time some of my lines had found their way
into print, and the little cheques I received for them had set my head
buzzing with dreams of wealth to be made by my pen. If we could only
pass the pitfalls of that dreaming age of youth, most of us would get
along fairly well in this matter-of-fact old world. But we are likely to
follow blindly the leadings of our dreams until we run our heads smack
into a corner-post of reality. Then we awaken, but in most cases too
late.

"I am glad to say that my father had the good sense to discourage my
aspirations. He wanted me to take a profession. But, elated by the
applause of my friends, I scorned the idea. What, mew my talents up in a
courtroom or a hospital? Never! It makes me sick when I look back upon
it and see what a fool I was. I settled down at home and began writing.
Lots of things came back from periodicals to which I sent them; but I
had been told that this was the common lot of all writers, and I plodded
on. A few things sold, just enough to keep my hopes in a state of
unstable equilibrium.

"Well, it 's no use to tell you how I went on in that way for four
years, clinging and losing hold, standing and slipping, seeing the prize
recede just as I seemed to grasp it. Then came the awakening. I saw that
it would have been better just to go on and do the conventional thing. I
fou