Los Angeles herald., 1910-12-11

these came from Japan and another
from Australia. OF course my per-
sonal friends recognized me at once,
and other people tried to smoke me
out. An English publisher came to
see me with a suggestion that if
wanted to abandon the field of blithe-
some romance l might do so and still
write him story just like The House
of Thousand Candles to be pub
lished in all languages under diff
ferent name. He was a very plausible
man and almost persuaded me that l
could produce two kinds of fiction
simultaneously.
"It ought to be possible for writer
to write what he pleases. when he
pleases, but there are obstacles. A
man does best what he feels most like
doing. But If you follow romance
with a serious novel everybody COM
plains. The critics reproach you for
not sticking to one type of book; the
public is even more resentful because
you have led them into reading a kind
of thing they have not expected from
you.
ut ought to be possible for a novel
ist to follow his own inclinations, and
it's only the shortness of life that
prompts me to desert the bright
guidons of romance. 1 consider Mr..
j. C. Snaith one of the best of living
novelists. His Broke of Covendon' is
a great novel, But from that he
Jumped into sheer comedy in Ara
minta,' a delightful and charming thing
when taken in the spirit in which it
is offered. Mr.. Snaith probably knew
as we'll as the critics who scolded him
for not writing another Broke of
Covendon' that it was very different
sort of thing: and very likely II ne
had had another serious book up his
sleeve he would have produced it. In
the same way another eminent Eng
lishman, Mr. Arnold Bennett, has
varied his performances. He wrote
The Old Wives Tale one of the best
novels Of many years, and then he mas
written an amusing farce, Buried
Alive 1t is-or it ought to be-his
affair IL he deserts one field for an
other. Attenuation of crops Is as goou
for the writer as for the farmer. The
farmer doesn't raise corn just because
it looks prettier in his Held tnan
wheat but because he knows by ex-
perience that he must not raise wheat
every year. Mr.. Howells in his long
and honorable career had tried MS
hand at every literary form. IL we
saw that he ought to have stuck to
novels we forget the pleasure we have
had in his essays, poems and tarces. he
never wrote anything more charming
than Indian Summer, but this is not
to abate our gratitude for The Rise
of Silas Lapham.' which probes SO
much deeper into the life about us.
"From the things people say to me
I Judge that 1t looks easy. this being
an author To the casual observer all
that is necessary is for the writer to
buy pen, ink and paper and go ahead.
The great stories of the s,iNoI enormous o,i
earnings Of some Of our American au-
thors in the past decade have con-
tributed to the public impressfan that
it is an easy trade. in which every, y.
body makes a lot of money. It Is, on
fine other hand. one of the most per-
picking. difficult and hazardous of en-
ployments, for you deal constantly
with an absolutely unknown quantity
the public.
Being an author Is lonesome busi-
ness. The writer must lock himself
up for a year at least to write any sort
of a book. He has only his ideas,
which are not always good company,
and must face his pen and paper