It's just silly--that's what it is--to say that something of a man
doesn't go into his work.
Why, even those wretched little ivories of mine, the thick-headed fellows
who paid for them knew my touch in them, and once spotted it instantly
when I tried to slip in another chap's who was hard up. Benlian used to
say that a man went about spreading himself over everything he came in
contact with--diffusing some sort of influence (as far as I could make it
out); and the mistake was, he said, that we went through the world just
wasting it instead of directing it. And if Benlian didn't understand all
about those things, I should jolly well like to know who does! A chap
with a great abounding will and brain like him, it's only natural he
should be able to pass himself on, to a statue or anything else, when he
really tried--did without food and talk and sleep in order to save
himself up for it!
"A man can't both _do_ and _be_," I remember he said to me once. "He's so
much force, no more, and he can either make himself with it or something
else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly. I'm going to do
_one_ perfect thing." Oh, he was a queer chap! Fancy, a fellow making a
thing like that statue, out of himself, and then wanting somebody to
adore him!
And I hadn't the faintest conception of how much I did adore him till
yet again, as he had done before, he seemed to--you know--to take
himself away from me again, leaving me all alone, and so wretched!... And
I was angry at the same time, for he'd promised me he wouldn't do it
again.... (This was one night, I don't remember when.)