care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to
plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be
brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface
of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless
usage.

The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on
that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering,
weariness or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker
in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who in
the fulness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand
specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly
improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must
run thus:--My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the
written word to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to
make you _see_. That--and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed,
you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement,
consolation, fear, charm--all you demand--and, perhaps, also that
glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask. To snatch in a
moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase
of life, is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in
tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and
without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes in the light of a
sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its colour, its form; and
through its movement, its form, and its colour, reveal the substance of
its truth--disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within
the core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded attempt of that
kind, if one be deserving and fortunate, one may perchance attain to
such clearness of sincerity that at last the presented vision of regret
or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders