“I think there is a good deal of philosophy in that.
“Tonight I wrote a story and Aunt Elizabeth knew what I was doing and was very much annoyed. She scolded me for wasting time. But it wasn’t wasted time. I grew in it—I know I did. And there was something about some of the sentences I liked. ‘I am afraid of the grey wood’—that pleased me very much. And—‘white and stately she walked the dark wood like a moonbeam.’ I think that is rather fine. Yet Mr. Carpenter tells me that whenever I think a thing especially fine I am to cut it out. But oh, I can’t cut that out—not yet, at least. The strange part is that about three months after Mr. Carpenter tells me to cut a thing out I come round to his point of view and feel ashamed of it. Mr. Carpenter was quite merciless over my essay today. Nothing about it suited him.
“‘Three alas’s in one paragraph, Emily. One would have been too many in this year of grace!’ ‘More irresistible—Emily, for heaven’s sake, write English! That is unpardonable.’
“It was, too. I saw it for myself and I felt shame going all over me from head to foot like a red wave. Then, after Mr. Carpenter had blue-pencilled almost every sentence and sneered at all my fine phrases and found fault with most of my constructions and told me I was too fond of putting ‘cleverisms’ into everything I wrote, he flung my exercise book down, tore at his hair and said,
“‘You write! Jade, get a spoon and learn to cook!’
“Then he strode off, muttering maledictions ‘not loud but deep.’ I picked up my poor essay and didn’t feel very badly. I can cook already, and I have learned a thing or two about Mr. Carpenter. The better my essays are the more he rages over them. This one must have been quite good. But it makes him so angry and impatient to see where I might have made it still better and didn’t—through carelessness or laziness or indifference—as he thinks. And he can’t tolerate a person who could do better and doesn’t. And he wouldn’t bother with me at all
