The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

Am I solemn? I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear." "You look as if you were taking me to a prayer-meeting or a funeral. If that's a grin your ears are very near together." "Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?" "Pray do, and I'll carry round your hat. It'll pay the expenses of our journey.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it-this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education.

She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.

The "germ," wherever gathered, has ever been for me, "the germ of a story," and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

Novelist-Citizen of Two Countries Interpreter of his Generation on both Sides of the Sea.