How she would go about among all the friends and relations, pulling the
poor articles to pieces, giving all the fine bits to John and the
rubbish to me, and hinting generally that my pretensions to authorship
were all very well, but that every one knew John did the work and I
looked out for the credit.
Here I paused. I had been successfully engaged in the pursuit of
trouble, and had conjured up so irritating a picture, that actually a
small tear had left its source, and was running over the bridge of my
nose!
'John,' I said, 'notwithstanding that I never did know how to begin
anything in an effective way, I am still determined to write, and you
must help me.'
Then I opened my heart to him, and told him my plan, and the imagined
tribulation it had given me in the last ten minutes.
'There are too many writers already, Helen,' he said; 'every man who
cannot see his way clear through life--every woman who fancies herself
misunderstood and unappreciated, worries out a book or poem or a set of
essays, to picture their individual wrongs and sufferings, and bores
every publisher of every magazine and paper of which they have ever
heard, till he is tormented into printing, or dies of manuscript on the
brain. I tell you, Helen, we do our share in aggravating the people we
meet daily, without tormenting an innocent man, 'who never did us any
harm;' and I for one, don't want an extra sin on my conscience.
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