Another was:
"As soon as you can say what you think, and not what some other person
has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man."
"Without concentration, Thomas, you are lost; concentrate, though your
coat-tails be on fire.
"Try your hand at description, and when you have done chortling over
the result, reduce the whole by half without missing anything out.
"Analyze your characters and their motives at the prodigious length in
which you revel, and then, my sonny, cut your analysis out. It is for
your own guidance, not the reader's.
"'I have often noticed,' you are always saying. The story has nothing
to do with you. Obliterate yourself. I see that will be your stiffest
job.
"Stop preaching. It seems to me the pulpit is where you should look
for the treasure. Nineteen, and you are already as didactic as
seventy."
And so on. Over his exercises Tommy was now engrossed for so long a
period that, as he sits there, you may observe his legs slowly
lengthening and the coming of his beard. No, his legs lengthened as he
sat with his feet in the basket; but I feel sure that his beard burst
through prematurely some night when he was thinking too hard about the
ladies.
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