Host. Speaking of “hidden sequences in logic,” as you call them, reminds me of a story a little girl told me. There was a nest in a tree, and the nest was full of young birds. One very forward one always would sit on the edge of the nest, and had several falls in this way. The old birds picked it up repeatedly, and told it that it would most certainly be caught by cats. After they found that it would not reform, the mother-bird took it by one wing and the father-bird took it by the other, and together they carried it to London, where they left it. I could not imagine why they carried it to London; but a day or two later I discovered that the little girl had been reading the story of Dick Whittington, which was founded on the fact that there were no cats in London.
Guest. I am constantly surprised at the adroitness children manifest in their little stories. Where does it vanish when they grow older? If almost any child kept up the promise of its story-telling infancy, every grown person would be a clever novelist. But there was a question I had in mind to ask you while we were on the subject of suggestion and plot. Do you ever receive any available ideas from other people?
Host. Yes, a great many excellent suggestions have come to me from others. But the better they are the less I like to use them, for a good idea deserves hard work, and when the work were done I would not feel that the story were really mine. In a few cases I have used suggestions from other people. For instance, there have been publishers who desired a story written upon a certain incident or idea.
Guest. The sense of ideal property is strong. One feels an honest indignation at taking what belongs to another, even though but a thought, and that of no account to the thinker, in his own opinion of it. Nevertheless, you feel how easily this ideal property of his might be “realized” with just a touch of art. Somehow, that touch of art, contributed by you, you feel would not quite make the material yours.
Host. I have been thinking why it is that very often the work of an author of fiction is not as true as the work of an artist, and I have concluded that the artist has one great advantage over the author of fiction, and over the poet, even. The artist has his models for his characters—models which he selects to come as near as possible to what his creations are going to be. The unfortunate author has no such models. He must rely entirely upon the characters he has casually seen, upon reading, upon imagination. How I envy my friend Frost! Last summer, when he wished to sketch a winter scene in Canada, he had a model sitting with two overcoats on, and the day was hot. Now, I couldn’t have any such models. I should have to describe my cold man just by thinking of him.
Guest. Or learn to shiver, yourself, like the boy in “Grimm’s Tales”—and describe that!
Host. But it is a serious matter. The best artists have live models to work from. But your writer of fiction—how, for instance, can he see a love scene enacted? He must describe it as best he can, and, although he may remember some of his own, he will never describe those.
Guest. Goethe was able to overcome such objections, I believe; and Heine tells us that,
“Out of my own great woes