My dear Blanche,
I positively shall not bore you with an interminated screed this time. But I thought you might like to know that I have recovered my health, and hope to be able to remain here for a few months at least. And if I remain well long enough to make me reckless I shall visit your town some day, and maybe ask your mother to command you to let me drive you to Berkeley. It makes me almost sad to think of the camp at the lake being abandoned.
So you liked my remarks on the "labor question." That is nice of you, but aren't you afraid your praise will get me into the disastrous literary habit of writing for some one pair of eyes?—your eyes? Or in resisting the temptation I may go too far in the opposite error. But you do not see that it is "Art for Art's sake"—hateful phrase! Certainly not, it is not Art at all. Do you forget the distinction I pointed out between journalism and literature? Do you not remember that I told you that the former was of so little value that it might be used for anything? My newspaper work is in no sense literature. It is nothing, and only becomes something when I give it the very use to which I would put nothing literary. (Of course I refer to my editorial and topical work.)
If you want to learn to write that kind of thing, so as to do good with it, you've an easy task. Only it is not worth learning and the good that you can do with it is not worth doing. But literature—the desire to do good with that will not help you to your means. It is not a sufficient incentive. The Muse will not meet you if you have any work for her to do. Of course I sometimes like to do good—who does not? And sometimes I am glad that access to a great number of minds every week gives me an opportunity. But, thank Heaven, I don't make a business of it, nor use in it a tool so delicate as to be ruined by the service.
Please do not hesitate to send me anything that you may be willing to write. If you try to make it perfect before you let me see it, it will never come. My remarks about the kind of mind which holds its thoughts and feelings by so precarious a tenure that they are detachable for use by others were not made with a forethought of your failure.
Mr. Harte of the New England Magazine seems to want me to know his work (I asked to) and sends me a lot of it cut from the magazine. I pass it on to you, and most of it is just and true.
But I'm making another long letter.
I wish I were not an infidel—so that I could say: "God bless you," and mean it literally. I wish there were a God to bless you, and that He had nothing else to do.
Please let me hear from you. Sincerely,A. B.
