"But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?"
I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE
under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination
would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there, not to
hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your
door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say,
"Roses! Boil them, or we won't have them!" My tales may not be roses,
but I will not boil them.
So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.
If a writer's aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains,
not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where
his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him
assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. If
there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of
mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash
again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an
insignificant, ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.
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