“If it isn’t asking too much,” began Tessa, timidly, “I wish that _you_ would write me a criticism, Gus. I like the way that you talk about books. Not many know how to read a book, and still fewer know how to talk about it. Will you, please?”
“You overrate my judgment; sentiment is not in my line; I have done my share in reading books; I do not know that I have got much out of them all. My own literary efforts would be like this:
“‘Here lies—and more’s the pity! All that remains of Thomas New-city.’
“Then you will not promise,” said Tessa, disappointedly. “I’m not afraid of sharp criticism; I want to do my poor little best; I do not expect to do as much as the girls in books who write stories. I do not expect any publisher to fall in love with me as he did in _St. Elmo_, wasn’t it?”
“I hope—perhaps that is the better word—to give others all the good that is given me; I believe that if one has the ‘gift of utterance’ even in so small a fashion as I have it, that experiences will be given to utter; the Divine Biographer writes the life for the human heart to read, interpret and put into words! And to them is given a peculiar life, or, it may be, a peculiar appreciation of life; heartaches go hand in hand with headaches.
“I was born into my home that I may write my books; my poor little books, my little, weak, crooked-backed children! Would Fredrika Bremer have written her books without her exceptional home-training, or Sara Coleridge, or any other of the lesser lights shine as they do shine, if the spark had not been blown upon by the breath of their home-fires? When I am sorry sometimes that I can not do what I would and go where I would, I think that I have not gathered together all the fragments that are around loose between the plank walk and the soldiers’ monument! Said mother, ‘_How_ do you make a book? Do you take a little from this book and a little from that?’”
“Oh, I said that I took a tone from her voice, an expression from father’s eyes, a curl from your head, a word from Gus’s lips, a laugh from Sue Greyson, a sigh from Dr. Lake, an apple blossom from Mr. Bird’s orchard, a spray of golden rod from the wayside, a chat from loungers in the Park, a wise saying from Miss Jewett—”