"I've no business to advise you. I've come to the conclusion that advice well followed is ruinous. Genius seldom takes advice, and nobody else is worth advising. I took advice and went into a newspaper office twenty years ago. I've been trying ever since to rectify my mistake. I would be a literary if I were not forced to be a newspaper man, just when my powers are freshest. I want to write of today. I want to deal with the city and its life, but I am forced to advise people upon the tariff. I come home at night worn out and the work I do then is only a poor starveling. Now, see this audience tonight! There are themes for you. See these lovers walking before and behind us. He may be a clerk in a bank; she the banker's daughter. That man Harvey, in whose box you sit tonight, was a farmer's boy, and his wife the daughter of a Methodist preacher in a cross-roads town. How did they get where they are, rich, influential, kindly, polished in manner? What an epic!"
"Are you advising me now?" she asked with a smile.
Her penetration delighted him.
"Yes, I am saying now in another way the things I wrote. I hope, Miss Dutcher, you will burn that packet without reading. I would not write it at all now."
They were facing each other a little out of the stream of people. She looked into his face with a bright smile, though her eyes were timorous.
"Do you mean manuscript and all?"
His face was kind, but he answered firmly:
"Yes, burn it all. Will you do it?"
"If you mean it."
"I mean it. You're too strong and young and creative to imitate anybody. Burn it, and all like it. Start anew tonight."