“You could write a history, but could you write one now? Even for a biography, you would have to read and study for months—perhaps years. As to the social questions you have been treating, men generally change their opinions about such things when they know a little more; and who would utter his opinions, knowing he most by and by wish he had not uttered them!”
“No one; but unhappily every one is cock-sure of his opinion till he changes it—and then he is as sure as before till he changes it again!”
“Opinion is not sight, your father says,” answered Molly; and again a little pause followed.
“Well, but, Molly,” resumed Walter, “how is that precious thing, leisure for thought, to be come by? Write reviews I will not! Write a history, I can not. Write a poem I might, but they wouldn’t buy copies enough of it to pay for the paper and printing. Write a novel I might, if I had time; but how to live, not to say how to think, while I was writing it? Perhaps I ought to be a tutor, or a school-master!”
“Do you feel drawn to that, Walter?”
“I do not.”
“And you do feel drawn to write?”
“I dare not say I have thoughts which demand expression; and yet somehow I want to write.”
“And you say that some begin by writing what is of no value, but come to write things that are precious?”
“It is true.”