have no literary centre. We have so much literature that from time to time it seems even to us we must have a literary centre. We say to ourselves, with a good deal of logic, Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire, or at least a fireplace.

It is not quality that is wanting, but perhaps it is the quantity of the quality; there is leaven, but not for so large a lump. It may be that New York is going to be our literary centre, as London is the literary centre of England, by gathering into itself all our writing talent, but it has by no means done this yet.

Preach the blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our eight-inch guns.

SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR
[WH#30][whspw10.txt]3383

If we had a grief with the Spanish government, and if it was so mortal we must do murder for it, we might have sent a joint committee of the House and Senate, and, with the improved means of assassination which modern science has put at our command, killed off the Spanish cabinet, and even the queen—mother and the little king. This would have been consequent, logical, and in a sort reasonable; but to butcher and capture a lot of wretched Spanish peasants and fishermen, hapless conscripts to whom personally and nationally we were as so many men in the moon, was that melancholy and humiliating necessity of war which makes it homicide in which there is not even the saving grace of hate, or the excuse of hot blood.

That stupid and atrocious hate towards the public enemy which abominable newspapers and politicians had tried to breed in the popular mind.

How is it the great pieces of good luck fall to us?

ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY
[WH#31][whass10.txt]3384

One of the most amusing questions concerning the short story is why a form which is singly so attractive that every one likes to read a short story when he finds it alone is collectively so repellent as it is said to be. Before now I have imagined the case to be somewhat the same as that of a number of pleasant people who are most acceptable as separate householders, but who lose caste and cease to be desirable acquaintances when gathered into a boarding-house.

I wish that the general reader, with whom the fault lies, could be made to say why, if he likes one short story by itself and four short stories in a magazine, he does not like, or will not have, a dozen short stories in a book. This was the baffling question which I began with and which I find myself forced to end with, after all the light I have thrown upon the subject.

LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL
[WH#32][whldh10.txt]3385

But in Europe everything is permanent, and in America everything is provisional. This is the great distinction which, if always kept in mind, will save a great deal of idle astonishment. It is in nothing more apparent than in the preparation here at Scheveningen for centuries of summer visitors, while at our Long Island hotel there was a losing bet on a scant generation of them. When it seemed likely that it might be a winning bet the sand was planked there in front of the hotel to the sea with spruce boards. It was very handsomely planked, but it was never afterwards touched, apparently, for any manner of repairs. Here, for half a mile the dune on which the hotel stands is shored up with massive masonry, and bricked for carriages, and tiled for foot-passengers; and it is all kept as clean as if wheel or foot had never passed over it. I am sure that there is not a broken brick or a broken tile in the whole length or breadth of it. But the hotel here is not a bet; it is a business. It has come to stay; and on Long Island it had come to see how it would like it.

THE YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR
[WH#33][whtyc10.txt]3386

An artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen.

We hear much of drudgery, but any sort of work that is slighted becomes drudgery; poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, acting, architecture, if you do not do your best by them, turn to drudgery sore as digging ditches, hewing wood, or drawing water; and these, by the same blessings of God, become arts if they are done with conscience and the sense of beauty.

At once put aside all anxiety about style; that is a thing that will take care of itself; it will be added unto him if he really has something to say; for style is only a man's way of saying a thing.

If I were to sin my sins over again, I think I should sin a little more on the side of candid severity. I am sure I should do more good in that way, and I am sure that when I used to dissemble my real mind I did harm to those whose feelings I wished to spare.

The trouble with success is that it is apt to leave life behind, or apart. The successful writer especially is in danger of becoming isolated from the realities that nurtured in him the strength to win success.

I think that every author who is honest with himself must own that his work would be twice as good if it were done twice.

CONFESSIONS OF SUMMER COLONIST
[WH#34][whcsc10.txt]3387

At this function, which is our chief social event, it is 'de rigueur' for the men not to dress, and they come in any sort of sack or jacket or cutaway, letting the ladies make up the pomps which they forego.

They say frankly that the summer folks have no idea how pleasant it is when they are gone.

Well, we calculate to do our work," he added, with an accent which sufficiently implied that their consciences needed no bossing in the performance.

MAN OF LETTERS IN BUSINESS
[WH#35][whmlb10.txt]3388

Artist has seasons, as trees, when he cannot blossom
Book that they are content to know at second hand
Business to take advantage of his necessity
Competition has deformed human nature
Conditions of hucksters imposed upon poets
Fate of a book is in the hands of the women
God of chance leads them into temptation and adversity
Historian, who is a kind of inferior realist
I do not think any man ought to live by an art
If he has not enjoyed writing no one will enjoy reading
Impropriety if not indecency promises literary success
Literature beautiful only through the intelligence
Literature has no objective value
Literature is Business as well as Art
Man is strange to himself as long as he lives
Men read the newspapers, but our women read the books
Most journalists would have been literary men if they could
Never quite sure of life unless I find literature in it
No rose blooms right along
Our huckstering civilization
Public whose taste is so crude that they cannot enjoy the best
Rogues in every walk of life
There is small love of pure literature
Two branches of the novelist's trade: Novelist and Historian
Work not truly priced in money cannot be truly paid in money

LITERATURE AND LIFE
[WH#36][whlal10.txt]3389

Impropriety if not indecency promises literary success.

Literature is beautiful only through the intelligence.

Public whose taste is so crude that they cannot enjoy the best.

They say frankly that the summer folks have no idea how pleasant it is when they are gone.

The trouble with success is that it is apt to leave