As to the influence of this constant writing and constant study, Mr. Howells remarked: “It was not without its immediate use. I learned
HOW TO CHOOSE BETWEEN WORDS,
after a study of their fitness; and, though I often employed them decoratively, and with no vital sense of their qualities, still, in mere decoration, they had to be chosen intelligently, and after some thought about their structure and meaning. I could not imitate great writers without imitating their method, which was to the last degree intelligent. They knew what they were doing, and, although I did not always know what I was doing, they made me wish to know, and ashamed of not knowing. The result was beneficial.”
Mr. Howells then spoke of his astonishment, when one day he was at work as usual in the printing-office at home, upon being invited to take a place upon a Republican newspaper at Columbus, the Capital; where he was given charge of the news department. This included the literary notices and book reviews, to which, at once, he gave his prime attention.
“When did you begin to contribute to the literature of the day?”
“If you mean, when did I begin to attempt to contribute, I should need to fix an early date, for I early had experience with rejected manuscripts. One of my pieces, upon the familiar theme of Spring, was the first thing I ever had in print. My father offered it to the editor of the paper I worked on in Columbus, where we were then living, and I first knew what he had done, when with mingled shame and pride, I saw it in the journal. In the tumult of my emotions, I promised myself that if I ever got through that experience safely, I would never suffer anything else of mine to be published; but it was not long before I offered the editor a poem, myself.”
“When did you publish your first story?”
“My next venture was a story in the Ik Marvel manner, which it was my misfortune to carry into print. I did not really write it, but composed it, rather, in type, at the case. It was not altogether imitated from Ik Marvel, for I drew upon the easier art of Dickens, at times, and helped myself out in places with bold parodies of ‘Bleak House.’ It was all very well at the beginning, but I had not reckoned with the future sufficiently to start with any clear ending in my mind; and, as I went on, I began to find myself more and more in doubt about it. My material gave out; my incidents failed me; the characters wavered, and threatened to perish in my hands. To crown my misery, there grew up an impatience with the story among its readers; and this found its way to me one day, when I overheard an old farmer, who came in for his paper, say that he ‘did not think that story amounted to much.’ I did not think so either, but it was deadly to have it put into words, and how I escaped the moral effect of the stroke I do not know. Somehow, I managed to bring the wretched thing to a close, and to live it slowly down.”
THE FATE FOLLOWING COLLABORATION
“My next contribution to literature was jointly with John J. Piatt, the poet, who had worked with me as a boy in the printing-office at Columbus. We met in Columbus, where I was then an editor, and we made our first literary venture together in a volume entitled, ‘Poems of Two Friends.’ The volume became instantly and lastingly unknown to fame; the West waited, as it always does, to hear what the East should say. The East said nothing, and two-thirds of the small edition of five hundred copies came back upon the publisher’s hands. This did not deter me, however, from contributing to the periodicals, which from time to time, accepted my efforts.