A few threads remain that might be gathered up—parting words, hints that cannot be classified. I must string them together like a row of beads; big and little mixed; we will try to get the big ones more or less in the middle if we can.
Grow everything from seed.
All seeds that are living (and therefore worth growing) have the power in them to grow.
But so many people miss the fact that, on the other hand, nothing else will grow; and that it is useless in art to transplant full-grown trees.
This is the key to great and little miseries, great and little mistakes.
Were you sorry to be on the lowest step of the ladder? Be glad; for all your hopes of climbing are in that.
And this applies in all things, from conditions of success and methods of "getting work" up to the highest questions of art and the "steps to Parnassus," by which are reached the very loftiest of ideals.
I must not linger over the former of these two things or do more than
sum it up in the advice, to take anything you can get, and to be glad, not sorry, if it is small and comes to you but slowly. Simple things, and little things, and many things, are more needed in the arts today than complex things and great and isolated achievements. If you have nothing to do for others, do some little thing for yourself: it is a seed, presently it will send out a shoot of your first "commission," and that will probably lead to two others, or to a larger one; but pray to be led by small steps; and make sure of firm footing as you go, for there is such a thing as trying to take a leap on the ladder, and leaping off it.
So much for the seed of success.