And there are the
youngsters growing up about us, and the hands to look after, and the
stock. I daresay it seems a very commonplace unintellectual life to you,
but it satisfies my nature more than the writing of books could ever do.
Besides, there are too many authors as it is. The world is so busy
reading and writing, it has no time left for thinking. You'll tell me,
of course, that books are thought, but that is only the jargon of the
Press. You come out here, old man, and sit as I do sometimes for days
and nights together alone with the dumb cattle on an upheaved island of
earth, as it were, jutting out into the deep sky, and you will know that
they are not. What a man thinks--really thinks--goes down into him and
grows in silence. What a man writes in books are the thoughts that he
wishes to be thought to think_."
Poor Jephson! he promised so well at one time. But he always had strange
notions.
CHAPTER I
When, on returning home one evening, after a pipe party at my friend
Jephson's, I informed my wife that I was going to write a novel, she
expressed herself as pleased with the idea. She said she had often
wondered I had never thought of doing so before. "Look," she added, "how
silly all the novels are nowadays; I'm sure you could write one.
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