and had got patted on the back and paid for them--though not enough to
live upon. I had quite a reputation, I was the successful man; I passed
my days in toil, the futility of which would sometimes make my cheek to
burn--that I should spend a man's energy upon this business, and yet
could not earn a livelihood: and still there shone ahead of me an
unattained ideal: although I had attempted the thing with vigour not less
than ten or twelve times, I had not yet written a novel. All--all my
pretty ones--had gone for a little, and then stopped inexorably like a
schoolboy's watch. I might be compared to a cricketer of many years'
standing who should never have made a run. Anybody can write a short
story--a bad one, I mean--who has industry and paper and time enough; but
not every one may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that
kills. The accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend
days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to blot.
Not so the beginner. Human nature has certain rights; instinct--the
instinct of self-preservation--forbids that any man (cheered and
supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the
miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in
weeks. There must be something for hope to feed upon. The beginner must
have a slant of wind, a lucky vein must be running, he must be in one of
those hours when the words come and the phrases balance of
themselves--_even to begin_. And having begun, what a dread looking
forward is that until the book shall be accomplished! For so long a time
the slant is to continue unchanged, the vein to keep running, for so long
a time you must keep at command the same quality of style: for so long a
time your puppets are to be always vital, always consistent, always
vigorous! I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every
three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat--not, possibly,
of literature--but at least of physical and moral endurance and the
courage of Ajax.

In the fated year I came to live with my father and mother at Kinnaird,
above Pitlochry. Then I walked on the red moors and by the side of the
golden burn; the rude, pure air of our mountains inspirited, if it did
not inspire, us, and my wife and I projected a joint volume of bogey
stories, for which she wrote "The Shadow on the Bed," and I turned out
"Thrawn Janet" and a first draft of "The Merry Men."