“Sure. Put the typewriter there. We can have more light on the scene, too.”
Mauney raised the front curtains to let in the dull, white glare of the snow-covered street.
“Now I’m going to lounge on the sofa with this scrap-album on my knees, if you’ll pardon my informality, and let you have my ideas in straight-from-the-shoulder sentences.”
“That’s the correct way,” she laughed, seating herself beside the round centre table and adjusting the ribbons of her typewriter. “If you don’t go too fast I can catch it directly on the machine. What are you going to call the book?”
“Thoughts on the Teaching of History.”
“Fine. What about an introduction?”
“Better have one, eh?”
“Yes. I would suggest a breezy opening of some sort for the purpose of getting under way.”
Mauney reclined on the sofa and smoked a cigarette. Presently he dictated, between periods of noise from the busy typewriter:
“Solomon was right. There is no end to making books. Why should any modern writer, with surfeit of literary heritage from past ages, seek to augment their number? Everything worth saying has been said already. Every vagary of thought, every wisp of emotion, every particle of knowledge has been crystallized in books. It is impossible for any contemporary to insinuate his thought, however perspicacious, further than human thought has been already insinuated. It is impossible for a modern writer to wiggle his pen in any form of gyration different from the gyrations of the multitudinous pens, crow-quills and styluses that have wiggled throughout the centuries. Repetition, imitation, plagiarism! Everything we write down has been written under, as in a palimpsest, whether or not we perceive the dim characters, all but erased through time. A book is no longer ‘the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up,’ but rather a craven member of a jingling throng who limp in tedious masquerade past the grand-stand of a plethoric and indolent public.