But I am bound by the laws of art.
Sermons, essays, lives of distinguished people, I can write to order
at times and seasons. A story comes, grows like a flower, sometimes
will and sometimes won't, like a pretty woman. When the spirits will
help, I can write. When they jeer, flout, make faces, and otherwise
maltreat me, I can only wait humbly at their gates, watch at the posts
of their doors.
"This story grows even when I do not write. I spent a month in the
mountains in Stockbridge _composing_ before I wrote a word.
"I only ask now a good physical condition, and I go to warmer climes
hoping to save time there. I put everything and everybody off that
interferes with this, except 'Pussy Willow,' which will be a pretty
story for a child's 'series.'"
At last she sailed away, about the 1st of March, 1867, with that
delightful power of knowing what she wanted, and being content when
she attained her end, which is too rare, alas! Her letters glowed and
blossomed and shone with the fruit and flowers and sunshine of the
South. It was hardly to be expected that her literary work could
actually reach the printers' hands under these circumstances as
rapidly as if she had been able to write at home: therefore it was
with no sense of surprise that we received from her, during the summer
of 1868, what proved to be a chapter of excuses instead of a chapter
of her book: "I have a long story to tell you of _what_ has
prevented my going on with my story, which you must see would so
occupy all the nerve and brain force I have that I have not been able
to write a word except to my own children.
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