"After our quarrel I felt as if I had a pebble in my shoe all day," Little Sister once wrote me. Let that be an example of the articulate manner, for by such vivid and homely metaphors she strews her pages. Did she reserve such phrases for her written words, I would feel bound to claim for letter-writing the distinction of being an art of itself, unrelated to any other faculty; but no, she talks in the same way--she is herself every moment. "My temper is violent and sudden, but it soon evaporates," she tells me; "it is like milk spilt on a hot stove."
The inspiration which impels one so to illustrate an abstract statement with a concrete example, illuminating and convincing, is a spark of the divine fire of personality. This is the crux of the articulate caste. An ounce of illustration is worth a pound of proof. Rob poetry of metaphor and it would be but prose; a simile, in verse, is usually merely ornament. The true purpose of tropes, however, is more virile and sustaining; they should reinforce logic, not decorate it. See how agilely Perilla can compress the whole history of a flirtation into six lines, defying the old saying that "there is nothing so difficult to relight as a dead love."
I thought I saw a stiffened form
A-lying in its shroud;
I looked again and saw it was
The love we once avowed.
"They told me you were dead!" I cried.
The corpse sat up and bowed!
When one has a few such acquaintances as these, books are superfluous. Who would read a dead romance when one can have it warm and living, vibrant, human, coming like instalments of a serial story, a perpetual revelation of character! Many pride themselves upon their proficiency in matter and many in manner,--there are those, even, who boast of mere quantity, but your professional writer is usually cool and calm, if not affected and pretentious. A letter, though, should be impregnate with living fire--it should boil. It is a treat of exceptional human nature. If the sentences be not spontaneous and unstudied the pleasure is lost. One may write fiery nonsense, but one must mean it at the time. One's mind must, as Sonia says, be hospitable, keep open house, and have the knack of making one's friends at home, to throb with one's own delights and despairs. One must give every mood open-handed, and mention nothing one may not say outright with gusto. But it is not everyone who can "bathe in rich, young feeling, and steep at day-dawning in green bedewed grasses" like my little Sonia. If I were dead she could still strike sparks out of me with her letters.
"Oh, if you could only see my new hat! I've been sitting in fetish worship half the evening, and I'll never dare tell how much I paid for it. You never need be good-looking under such a hat as that, for no one will ever see you!" Does not this quotation bring Little Sister very near to you, and make her very human and real? Ah, Little Sister is not afraid to be herself! She knows that she can do nothing better. "It's a terrible handy thing to have a smashing adjective in your pocket," she confesses. Little Sister has a good aim, too; she always hits my heart. And yet she acknowledges that "there are days when letters are blankly impossible."
Such friends write the kind of letters that one keeps always, the kind that can be re-read without skipping. It is their own talk, their own lives, their own selves put up like fruit preserves of various flavours, moods and colours, warranted not to turn or spoil.
And as for the gagged, wordless folk, it is my opinion that too much sensibility has been accredited to them. To any rich exotic nature expression must come as a demand not to be refused. It is feeling bubbling over into words. Other souls are compressed and silent; they have the possibilities of the bud--something warm and inspiring may at any time make them expand and free them from the constraint--but there is not much perfume until the flower blooms.
The Tyranny of the Lares
No, I have never been tainted with a mania for collecting. It has never particularly interested me, because I already happened to have two of a kind, to possess a third. I prefer things to be different rather than alike, and the few things I really care for I like for themselves alone, and not because they are one of a family, set or series.
But there are so few things to be envious of, even then! After one's necessities are provided for, there are not many things worth possessing, and fewer still worth the struggle of collecting. Acquisition seems to rob most things of their intrinsic value, of the extreme desirability they seemed to possess, and yet it does not follow that the practice of collecting is not worth while. It is worth while for itself, but not for the things collected. It is like hunting. The enjoyment, to your true sportsman, does not depend entirely upon the game that is bagged. If the hunter went out solely for the purpose of obtaining food he would better go to the nearest poulterer.