Intelligence And Proper Education Will Give You

If There Are Words And Wrongs Like Knives, Whose Deep Inflicted Lacerations Never Heal - Cutting Injuries And Insults Of Serrated And Poison-dripping Edge - So, Too, There Are Consolations Of Tone Too Fine For The Ear Not Fondly And For Ever To Retain Their Echo: Caressing Kindnesses - Loved, Lingered Over Through A Whole Life, Recalled With Unfaded Tenderness, And Answering The Call With Undimmed Shine, Out Of That Raven Cloud Foreshadowing Death Himself.

It Is One Of My Faults, That Though My Tongue Is Sometimes Prompt Enough At An Answer, There Are Times When It Sadly Fails Me In Framing An Excuse; And Always The Lapse Occurs At Some Crisis, When A Facile Word Or Plausible Pretext Is Specially Wanted To Get Me Out Of Painful Embarrassment.

If You Like Poetry Let It Be First Rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith Pope (if You Will Though I Don't Admire Him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth And Southey. Now Ellen Don't Be Startled At The Names Of Shakespeare, And Byron. Both These Were Great Men And Their Works Are Like Themselves, You Will Know How To Chuse The Good And Avoid The Evil, The Finestpassages Are Always The Purest, The Bad Are Invariably Revolting You Will Never Wish To Read Them Over Twice.

There Is, I Am Convinced, No Picture That Conveys In All Its Dreadfulness, A Vision Of Sorrow, Despairing, Remediless, Supreme. If I Could Paint Such A Picture, The Canvas Would Show Only A Woman Looking Down At Her Empty Arms.

But This I Know; The Writer Who Possesses The Creative Gift Owns Something Of Which He Is Not Always Master--something That At Times Strangely Wills And Works For Itself. He May Lay Down Rules And Devise Principles, And To Rules And Principles It Will Perhaps For Years Lie In Subjection; And Then, Haply Without Any Warning Of Revolt, There Comes A Time When It Will No Longer Consent.