writing

"You see," she said frankly, "writing must be a trade, like anything else.

"Of course, you could go on with your writing, too."

"Because, without writing there wouldn't be any high school.

She stretched out her hand, and suddenly closed the open book on my knee, as if the sight of the writing in it were unendurable to her.

"I thought I saw her writing on this page," I answered.

Steadily as she persisted in taking the rational view, nevertheless the writing frightened her.

An appointment with a shadowy Something in your own imagination, which appears and disappears, and leaves substantial writing behind it!

Then I told my story to the Scotch doctor as I have told it here; and, that done, I opened the sketch-book to let him see the writing for himself.

There was my half-finished drawing of the waterfall--but where were the two lines of writing beneath?

"I declare to you, on my word of honor," I said to him, "that I saw the apparition writing with my pencil at the bottom of that page.

"If you feel the slightest doubt of what I have told you," I went on, "ask my mother; she will bear witness that she saw the writing too."

"I don't doubt that you both saw the writing," answered Mr.

If you can suppose a disembodied spirit to appear in earthly clothing--of silk or merino, as the case may be--it's no great stretch to suppose, next, that this same spirit is capable of holding a mortal pencil, and of writing mortal words in a mortal sketching-book.

Also, to succeed at the writing game, I found I had to unlearn about everything the teachers and professors of literature of the high school and university had taught me.

At the end of three working years, two of which were spent in high school and the university and one spent at writing, and all three in studying immensely and intensely, I was publishing stories in magazines such as the "Atlantic Monthly," was correcting proofs of my first book (issued by Houghton, Mifflin Co.), was selling sociological articles to "Cosmopolitan" and "McClure's," had declined an associate editorship proffered me by telegraph from New York City, and was getting ready to marry.