“Do you believe that success comes to those who have a special bent or taste, which they cultivate by hard work?”
“I can only answer that out of my literary experience. For my own part, I believe I have never got any good from a book, that I did not read merely because I wanted to read it. I think this may be applied to anything a person does. The book, I know, which you read from a sense of duty, or because for any reason you must, is apt to yield you little. This, I think, is also true of everything, and the endeavor that does one good—and lasting good,—is the endeavor one makes with pleasure. Labor done in another spirit will serve in a way, but pleasurable labor brings, on the whole, I think, the greatest reward.”
Referring again to his early years, it was remarked: “A definite literary ambition grew up in me; and in the long reveries of the afternoon, when I was distributing my case in the printing-office, I fashioned a future of over-powering magnificence and undying celebrity. I should be ashamed to say what literary triumphs I achieved in those preposterous deliriums. But I realize now that such dreams are nerving, and sustain one in an otherwise barren struggle.”
“Were you ever tempted and willing to abandon your object of a literary life for something else?”
“I was, once. My first and only essay aside from literature was in the realm of law. It was arranged with a United States Senator that I should study law in his office. I tried it a month, but almost from the first day, I yearned to return to my books. I had not only to go back to literature, but to the printing-office, and I gladly chose to do it,—a step I never regretted.”
AS TO A HAPPY LIFE,
it was said by Mr. Howells, at the close of our interview:—
“I have come to see life, not as the chase of a forever-impossible personal happiness, but as a field for endeavor toward the happiness of the whole human family. There is no other success. I know, indeed, of nothing more subtly satisfying and cheering than a knowledge of the real good will and appreciation of others. Such happiness does not come with money, nor does it flow from a fine physical state. It cannot be bought. But it is the keenest joy, after all; and the toiler’s truest and best reward.”