I HEAR that B----- directed to have himself buried on the edge of the
pond where his duckstand was located, in order that flocks of migrating
birds might fly over his grave every autumn. He did not have to die, to
become a dead shot. A comrade once said of him: "Yes, B----- is a great
sportsman. He has peppered everything from grouse in North Dakota to his
best friend in the Maine woods."
WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into his novel he must not let him
bore the reader. The fellow must be made amusing, which he would not
be in real life. In nine cases out of ten an exact reproduction of
real life would prove tedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable,
and frequently they add nothing to fiction. The art of the realistic
novelist sometimes seems akin to that of the Chinese tailor who
perpetuated the old patch on the new trousers. True art selects and
paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.
THE last meeting I had with Lowell was in the north room of his house at
Elmwood, the sleeping-room I had occupied during a two years' tenancy
of the place in his absence abroad.
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