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The world is to the meditative man what the mulberry plant is to the silkworm. The essay-writer has no lack of subject-matter. He has the day that is passing over his head; and, if unsatisfied with that, he has the world's six thousand years to depasture his gay or serious humour upon. I idle away my time here, and I am finding new subjects every hour. Everything I see or hear is an essay in bud.
It would be an ill turn for an essay-writer to destroy Walt Whitman, for he was discovered by the essayists, and but for them his notoriety would have been postponed for fifty years. He is the mare's nest of "American Literature," and scarce a contributor to The Saturday Review but has at one time or another raised a flag over him.
"Well, you are lucky. Your style I do not want to flatter you, but your style is quite formed. You must have been a very successful essay-writer at school." "No, I never wrote much," said poor Florence. "I I hate writing," she said the next moment. The words burst impetuously from her lips. "By all that's wonderful! what do you mean by that?
The essay, as a literary form, resembles the lyric, in so far as it is moulded by some central mood whimsical, serious, or satirical. Give the mood, and the essay, from the first sentence to the last, grows around it as the cocoon grows around the silkworm. The essay-writer is a chartered libertine, and a law unto himself.
The ordinary Writers of Morality prescribe to their Readers after the Galenick way; their Medicines are made up in large Quantities. An Essay-Writer must practise in the Chymical Method, and give the Virtue of a full Draught in a few Drops.
But it was wonderful how that perverse trail among the boulders did unwind itself, as if it never would come to an end; and I was not surprised, on consulting a guide-book afterwards, to find that my half mile had really been a mile and a half. One's sensations in such a case I have sometimes compared with those of an essay-writer when he is getting near the end of his task.
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