e once when we were
getting used to it. A schooner passed us, quite close, a midget which
fairly danced over the running hills, lifting her bows and soaring
upwards, light as a bird, and settling in the hollows amid a white
cloud. "Isn't she brave!" said the Boy.

_December 1910._

VIII. The Art of Writing

Whether I placed the writing-pad on my knees in a great chair, or on
the table, or on the floor, nothing happened to it. I can only say that
that morning the paper was full of vile hairs, which the pen kept
getting into its mouth--enough to ruin the goodwill of any pen. Yet all
the circumstances of the room seemed luckily placed for work to flow
with ease; but there was some mysterious and inimical obstruction. The
fire was bright and lively, the familiar objects about the table
appeared to be in their right place. Again I examined the gods of the
table to be sure one had not by mischance broken the magic circle and
interrupted the current of favour for me. They were rightly
orientated--that comic pebble paper-weight Miss Muffet found on the
beach of a distant holiday, the chrysanthemums which were fresh from
that very autumn morning, stuck in the blue vase which must have got
its colour in the Gulf Stream; and the rusty machete blade from Peru,
and the earthenware monkey squatting meekly in his shadowy niche,
holding the time in his hands. The time was going on, too.

I tried all the tricks I knew for getting under way, but the pen
continued to do nothing but draw idle faces and pick up hairs, which it
held firmly in its teeth. Then the second telegram was brought to me.
"What about Balkan article?" it asked, and finished with a studied
insult, after the manner of the editor-kind, whose assurance that the
function of the universe is only fulfilled when they have published the
fact makes them behave as would Jove with a thick-headed immortal.
"These Balkan atrocities will never cease," I said, dropping the
telegram into the fire.

Had I possessed but one of those intelligent manuals which instruct the
innocent in the art, not only of writing, but of writing so well that a
very disappointed and world-weary editor rejoices when he sees the
manuscript, puts his thumbs up and calls for wine, I would have
consulted it. (I should be glad to hear if there is such a book, with a
potent remedy for just common dulness--the usual opaque, gummous, slow,
thick, or fat head.) As for me, I have nothing but a cheap dic