When You Travel Your First Discovery Is

History ... With Its Long, Leisurely, Gentlemanly Labors, The Books Arriving By Post, The Cards To Be Kept And Filed, The Sections To Be Copied, The Documents To Be Checked, Is The Ideal Pursuit For The New England Mind.

Now, My Novel Begins. No, Now I Begin My Novel—and Yet I Cannot Decide Whether To Call Myself I Or She.

The Private And Serious Drama Of Guilt Is Not Often A Useful One For Fiction Today And Its Disappearance, Following Perhaps The Disappearance From Life, Appears As A Natural, Almost Unnoticed Relief, Like Some Of The Challenging Illnesses Wiped Out By Drug And Vaccines.

Sex, Without Society As Its Landscape, Has Never Been Of Much Interest To Fiction.

Many People Believe Letters The Most Personal And Revealing Form Of Communication. In Them, We Expect To Find The Charmer At His Nap, Slumped, Open-mouthed, Profoundly Himself Without Thought For Appearances. Yet, This Is Not Quite True. Letters Are Above All Useful As A Means Of Expressing The Ideal Self; And No Other Method Of Communication Is Quite So Good For This Purpose. In Conversation, Those Uneasy Eyes Upon You, Those Lips Ready With An Emendation Before You Have Begun To Speak, Are A Powerful Deterrent To Unreality, Even To Hope.