Don't know what my book will turn out to be after a few more months
of work. It will be a queer thing anyhow: the Japanese part will be
interesting enough; but the personal-impression parts do not develop
well. And I must work very hard at it. You think that a day or two in
the Grand Hotel is good for me once in a while; but you can't imagine
what difficulty it is to find any time while the thing is still in
pupa-condition.
But what most injures an author is not means and leisure: it is
_society_, conventions, obligations, waste of time in forms and
vanities. There are very few men strong enough to stand the life of
society, and to write. I can think of but one of importance,--that is
Henry James;--but his special study _is_ society.