The taste has followed me all my life through, but I could never
indulge it except as a recreation. I was not to be an artist, and
I am rather glad that I was hindered, for I had even stronger in-
clinations in other directions; and art, really noble art,
requires the entire devotion of a lifetime.
I seldom thought seriously of becoming an author, although it
seemed to me that anybody who had written a book would have a
right to feel very proud. But I believed that a person must be
exceedingly wise before presuming to attempt it: although now and
then I thought I could feel ideas growing in my mind that it
might be worth while to put into a book,--if I lived and studied
until I was forty or fifty years old.
I wrote my little verses, to be sure, but that was nothing; they
just grew. They were the same as breathing or singing. I could
not help writing them, and I thought and dreamed a great many
that were ever put on paper. They seemed to fly into my mind
and away again, like birds with a carol through the air.
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