ed heart. It seems to me
that the one thing worth knowing in this world is what other people
think and feel about the great experiences of life. The writers who
have helped the world most are those who have gone deepest into the
heart; but the dullest part of our conventionality is that when a man
disguises the secrets of his soul in a play, a novel, a lyric, he is
supposed to have helped us and ministered to our deepest needs; but if
he speaks directly, in his own voice and person, of these things, he is
at once accused of egotism and indecorum. It is not that we dislike
sentiment and feeling; we value it as much as any nation; but we think
that it must be spoken of symbolically and indirectly. We do not
consider a man egotistical, if he will only give himself a feigned
name, and write of his experiences in the third person. But if he uses
the personal pronoun, he is thought to be shameless. There are even
people who consider it more decent to say "one feels and one thinks,"
than to say "I feel and I think." The thing that I most desire, in
intercourse with other men and women, is that they should talk frankly
of themselves, their hopes and fears, their beliefs and uncertainties.
Yet how many people can do that? Part of our English shyness is shown
by the fact that people are often curiously cautious about what they
say, but entirely indiscreet in what they write. The only books which
possess a real and abiding vitality are those in which personality is
freely and frankly revealed. Of course there are one or two authors
like Shakespeare who seem to have had a power of penetrating and
getting inside any personality, but, apart from them, the books that go
on being read and re-read are the books in which one seems to clasp
hands with a human soul.

I said many of these things to my friend, and he replied that he
thought I was probably right, but that he could not change his opinion.
He would not have had these letters published until all the survivors
were dead. He did not think that the people who liked the book were
actuated by good motives, but had merely a desire to penetrate behind
the due and decent privacies of life; and he would have stopped the
publication of such letters if he could, because even if people liked
them, it was not good for them to read them. He said that he himself
felt on reading the book as if he had been listening at keyholes, or
peeping in at windows, and seeing the natural endearments of hus