_Saranac_, _February_ 1888.
MY DEAR ARCHER,—Pretty sick in bed; but necessary to protest and continue
your education.
Why was Jenkin an amateur in my eyes? You think because not amusing (I
think he often was amusing). The reason is this: I never, or almost
never, saw two pages of his work that I could not have put in one without
the smallest loss of material. That is the only test I know of writing.
If there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have been
as clearly and as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it’s
amateur work. Then you will bring me up with old Dumas. Nay, the object
of a story is to be long, to fill up hours; the story-teller’s art of
writing is to water out by continual invention, historical and technical,
and yet not seem to water; seem on the other hand to practise that same
wit of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the proper art
of writing. That is one thing in which my stories fail: I am always
cutting the flesh off their bones.