nged
and moved over, and set up in my mind, than some insinuating,
persistent, concrete human being comes along, works his way in to
illustrate it, and spoils it. Here is Meakins, for instance. I have been
thinking on the other side of my thought every time I have thought of
him. I have no more sympathy than any one with a man who spends all his
time going round and round in his reading and everything else,
swallowing a world up in principles. "Why should a good, live, sensible
man," I feel like saying, "go about in a world like this stowing his
truths into principles, where, half the time, he cannot get at them
himself, and no one else would want to?" Going about swallowing one's
experience up in principles is very well so far as it goes. But it is
far better to go about swallowing up one's principles into one's self.

A man who has lived and read into himself for many years does not need
to read very many books. He has the gist of nine out of ten new books
that are published. He knows, or as good as knows, what is in them, by
taking a long, slow look at his own heart. So does everybody else.

II

On Being Lonely with a Book

The P. G. S. of M. said that as far as he could make out, judging from
the way I talked, my main ambition in the world seemed to be to write a
book that would throw all publishers and libraries out of employment.
"And what will your book amount to, when you get it done?" he said. "If
it's convincing--the way it ought to be--it will merely convince people
they oughtn't to have read it."

"And that's been done before," I said. "Almost any book could do it." I
ventured to add that I thought people grew intelligent enough in one of
my books--even in the first two or three chapters, not to read the rest
of it. I said all I hoped to accomplish was to get people to treat other
men's books in the same way that they treated mine--treat everything
that way--take things for granted, get the spirit of a thing, then go
out and gloat on it, do something with it, live with it--anything but
this going on page after page using the spirit of a thing all up,
reading with it.

"Reading down through in a book seems a great deal more important to me
than merely reading the book through."

I expected that The P. G. S. of M. would ask me what I meant by reading
down through, but he didn't. He was still at large, worrying about the
world. "I have no patience with it--your idea," he broke out. "It's all
in the a