What unspeakable folly! To write--was not that the joy
and the privilege of one who had an urgent message for the world?
Her father, she knew well, had no such message; he had abandoned
all thought of original production, and only wrote about writing.
She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of
earning money. And all these people about her, what aim had they
save to make new books out of those already existing, that yet
newer books might in turn be made out of theirs? This huge
library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a
trackless desert of print--how intolerably it weighed upon the
spirit!
Oh, to go forth and labour with one's hands, to do any poorest,
commonest work of which the world had truly need! It was ignoble
to sit here and support the paltry pretence of intellectual
dignity. A few days ago her startled eye had caught an
advertisement in the newspaper, headed 'Literary Machine'; had it
then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of
such poor creatures as herself to turn out books and articles?
Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently,
that the work of literary manufacture might be physically
lightened.
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