He was looking at me now, across that remarkable blue tie and shiny sword-hilt, with very touching deference, and with, of all conceivable emotions, envy. I understood, with the most quaint of shocks, that I possessed every one of the things which this preposterous young fellow wanted. I had written and published, sometimes even with commercial extenuation, at least as many magazine stories and books as he hoped by and by to have to his credit: I could imagine how my comfortable-looking large home, and my ownership of actual stocks and bonds, and my acquaintance with a number of more or less distinguished persons, would figure in his callow mild eyes: and I had tasted, too, if not of fame, most certainly of all the notoriety he ever aspired to. Why, but what does it not seem to this pathetic boy, I reflected, actually to have one's picture in the papers! For I could well remember certain ancient glancings toward that awesome pinnacle of being a celebrity.
I was, in fine, by this boy's standards, a success. I had to-day each one of the things he had ever consciously desired. That really was a rather terrible reflection....
§ 96
But he was speaking. "Then you would honestly advise me, sir, not to take up writing as a regular thing?"
"I don't see how I can advise you that,—not honestly, at least. For you will get out of the writing all—heaven help you!—that you hope to get."
"Why, then—" He was abeam.
"You simply wait until you have got it! You can attend to your grinning then, if you feel like it. For you will get every one of the things you think you want. Only, you will get them by the, upon the whole, most philanthropic process of not ever writing any of the mush which you now plan to write."
"But I don't understand—"
"Nor do I, either, quite. But from the start will be tugging at your pen a pig-headed imp that will be guiding it his way instead of the way you intended. And with each book he will be growing stronger and more importunate and more cunning, and he will be stealing the pen away from you for longer and longer intervals. And by and by that imp, full grown now and the very devil of a taskmaster, will be dictating your books from beginning to end,—not to speak here of his making you sweat blood when you revise, at his orders, all the earlier ones."
"Come, now,"—and the young fellow was looking at me rather like a troubled cow,—"come, now, sir, but you don't really mean I am going to be possessed by a devil?"