As to behavior of my imagination when reading and when writing, it differs as the behavior of a man loafing differs from that of a man slaving under the lash. This is a large difference. I don't write easily; not apparently because I like it. And yet any other job would certainly suit me less. So where are we?
William H. Hamby: It all depends on the writer. If he has seen what he is describing and does it interestinglyand convincingly I see it too. If he doesn't—I skip to the next story. I do not bring up in my mind sounds described in a story nearly so vividly as I do tastes or smell. The description of an odor comes very vividly to me. I do not feel physical pain as I read of it—with the exception of cold or fatigue. I have a very vivid sense of touch and any mention of coldness, smoothness or the like is felt as I read.
I see things with my eyes shut and I often see them in colors. At times they are misty and again I see the picture in very vivid details.
Solid geometry was very easy for me. I started in solid geometry before I had studied plane geometry and demonstrated every proposition in the text.
I usually see most vividly that which is merely suggested or very briefly described. A detailed description kills the picture with me.
I have no stock pictures. If a picture comes at all, it is a new one.
Naturally one's imagination works more definitely when he is writing than when reading. In order to write at all one must bring his mind into a state of intense activity. But he can read almost passively—often passing over long stretches merely to get to what he hopes is coming.
No, I never have.
Joseph Mills Hanson: When I read a story I see everything vividly, provided it interests me; characters, action and setting. I do not hear sounds; merely realize them. Yes, I believe I do taste flavors. Not much doing on smells. Sense of touch also rather somnolent (hope I'm not getting atrophied!). But Idofeel actual, physical pain, if it is feelingly depicted.
Often "see things with my eyes shut"; it comes naturally. Things seem in natural colors and distinct.
Thank goodness, I never studied solid geometry. Algebra was bad enough. However, I liked plane geometry better than other mathematics—which isn't saying much.
If I become absorbed in a story, my imagination runs away ahead of the author; though not always, of course, nor often, to his conclusions.
I usually get different pictures for every church or cowboy, or dog or barnyard, or anything else.
There is, I believe, a difference in the conduct of my imagination when reading or writing a story. It acts more slowly, perhaps less logically, when writing; I have to ponder situations a good deal before deciding and going ahead.
Yes, I have thought of them as tools of my trade. The sub-divisions have not occurred to me in that light.
E. E. Harriman: In reading a story I see every, smallest detail and if the author is chary of descriptions I fill in unconsciously. One reason why I am at times short on descriptions—I see it so plainly myself that I am liable to forget that others can not. My imagination carries me into a field of action so completely that I am often under a strain that tires me out. I have, in writing a gunfight scene, jumped nearly out of my chair when a neighbor slammed a board down on another one. I am often so affected by pathos of my own composition that I have to pause and assure myself that it is fiction, before I can finish. In reading Payson Terhune's dog story in the lastLadies' Home Journallast night I got so worked up that I wanted to hammer hell out of that speed maniac who killed the dog. I feel, see, hear, smell, anything vividly represented by a good writer.
Seeing in the dark—the colorings are there, to the last gradation. Every detail is clear cut and distinct. I can see things I saw fifty years ago, in just that way. As I think of my dog that died forty-two years ago, I can see the shadings that ran down from his reddish back to his light yellow belly. I can see the color and expression of his eyes and the way he would cock his head on one side when listening to me.
Never studied solid geometry, though I made the drawingsin the University of Minnesota. Enjoyed them immensely and took a high mark.
If a writer hints at anything, my mind pictures it instantly. If his description is stopped shy of completion, I finish it.
I have no stock pictures, though my memory is full of scenes. Any style or kind is built up instantly by a phrase or sentence.
I think that there is a marked difference in imaginative vision when writing or reading. In reading I feel that I am looking at a photograph or watching action by others. In writing I feel that I am in the scene—a part of it—helping in the action.
I use these "tools of my trade" daily. Often I start with a man or boy as my central character. Before long he gets into a scrape. At once I become that character and have to live the situation in order to learn what he would or could do to get out of a fix.
Nevil G. Henshaw: This is rather hard to answer, but in reading a book or story that I'm genuinely interested in I react far beyond the written page in all the senses you enumerate. I imagine I feel most the emotions of the characters, fear, hate, desire, pain, etc. Also taste hits me hard. Smell not so much. Sound still less. Touch last of all. A scene well done I see perfectly and I delight in the little touches that make real and set off the whole, trifles like a puddle in a road, a rock on a hillside, an odd piece of furniture or ornament in a room.
In writing unless I can see what I'm writing about I can't get it on paper. The picture is perfectly clear to the last detail no matter how fanciful. This applies to any picture I try to conjure up. I see the colors also.
Being a dub at all mathematics, I never studied geometry.
If an author gives me a good hint I can generally go beyond it.
I've no stock pictures, especially in my own work. Aplace will give me an idea even quicker than a person. But then I've always thought that there was a great deal in that ancient expression "Ain't nature grand."
There is, of course, a big difference though it's hard to explain. Perhaps I can get at it best by saying that writing is work, reading play.
These matters are most certainly tools of the trade, and I use them all I can.
Joseph Hergesheimer: My reaction to a story is partly to the fineness of its writing and partly to the depth of its humanity—its pity and understanding. I see no mental pictures—again all this is simply the emotion of recognition. Solid geometry? I have never studied anything. Stock pictures or individual vision? If it isn't the latter it's nothing! Resent too many images? This is not clear. "Behavior of the imagination" escapes me. Tools of trade? This, too, is complicated. I think I am centered on the main thing, and the rest follow subconsciously.
Robert Hichens: I can not answer this.
R. de S. Horn: I certainly consider these matters as tools of the trade. Perhaps this comes from the peculiar situation I find myself in;viz., having to write or do nothing. I had always liked to write; did a lot of it at the Naval Academy and afterward as a side line mostly for the pure fun of it. But when I was smashed up and rendered unfit for most occupations I took to writing with deliberate intent to make it my one profession. Writing is in mind at all times, whatever I do, wherever I go. And with such in view I try to make everything useful and subservient to the end in view.
I find that my imagination is quite vivid, and it immediately interests itself in every story I read. I smell smells, see sights, hear sounds, taste tastes and feel emotions provided the author himself has done so and thus has handed them on to me. In other words I quite enter into the atmosphere of the stories I read. More than this, I sometimes find myself seized with a new solution to the storyand thinking it out to see if possibly the story wouldn't have been better that way. Generally the pictures I see in my imagination are black and white; silhouettes, you might say, though I still see the colors. The idea is that it is the outlines that strike me most forcibly, sort of like cardboard outlines of mountains, for instance, that show the bold characteristics rather than the tiny details. By focussing I am able to bring out the details better, however, after a bit. But the first impression is usually silhouette-like.
Solid geometry and spherical trigonometry did give me considerably more trouble than the plane branches of mathematics. However by the time I had finished calculus and a few more like that I seemed to have acquired the knack of it.
The author's words frequently set my imagination off in its own and sometimes quite different channels.
I don't believe I have stock pictures. It seems to me that every story should have its own distinctive characters and settings. However I have not written sufficiently to say for certain that I don't use them unconsciously.
I think my imagination works differently when writing than when reading. In the first case I direct it myself and deliberately put it to work in most cases after the story actually begins to take form. But when reading it works purely subconsciously.
Clyde B. Hough: The mere printed word does not and never can present the picture in the fulness of its maturity. The best that the printed word can hope to do is to suggest graphically, so graphically that the imagination of the dullest reader will experience no difficulty in rounding out the picture, in clothing it with all the splendor, emotion, etc., that the author has suggested. It is my belief that any author's success will be measured according to the extent that he succeeds in achieving this goal.
When I read other men's stories, or to be accurate I should say when I study other men's stories, I see theircharacters. I am enthralled by their action which expresses their sensations. My subconscious mind is aware of the tastes, the flavors and the smells or anything else that goes to round out a given setting, but I do not physically experience these things. My imagination does not reproduce the sense of touch, nor does it cause me to feel pain. I account for this by the fact that all the rounding out of the story, as a reader supplying what the author suggests, is left to my subconscious mind, because my conscious mind is solely occupied with studying the story from the craftsman's standpoint. To put the whole matter in a nut shell, I do not read for entertainment, but solely to study the other fellow's craftsmanship in order that I myself may acquire more craft.
Yes, I can "see things with my eyes shut" and the limitations are, allowing for the ratio of imagination, in proportion to the number and variety, or the sum total of all the actual concrete things I have ever seen. These pictures and objects in my mind automatically take on the color that is appropriate to themselves. The details are not distinct unless I make a special effort in concentration. But by an effort of the will I can generally straighten out the kinks.
I have not studied any form of higher mathematics.
I do not think that I elaborate on other men's work in a creative sense, although many stories have started me thinking on certain lines which ultimately rewarded me with a plot germ. But in all such cases I have been extremely alert to avoid allowing any similarity between such a story and the other author's story which fathered the embryo thought.
I do not believe that I have stock pictures for either pirates, preachers or church steeples. I make this statement because I am never surprised at meeting people differently garbed or at seeing things differently shaped from what I have been accustomed to see them.
When I am reading, my imagination works, I believe,just about as much as the suspense, thrill, emotion, etc., recorded in what I'm reading requires—no more than that. But when I'm writing my imagination is brought under the pressure of my will and driven to its uttermost capacity—with the guiding hand of judgment at the reins always of course.
Some of the phases of the writing craft thus far touched upon I have considered and used consciously. Some I have missed automatically.
This laboratory test will be of inestimable worth to any author.
Emerson Hough: I have no mental contortions. My mouth never waters. Just see the pictures clear, as nearly as I can tell. Geometry? You are getting too deep. All mathematics troubled me plenty. As to response, I don't savvy this. No, I don't think any writer has stock pictures who has resources of his own. I don't resent; sometimes I don't read. Readingvs.writing? I'll say there is! Tools? I never throw fits. I am a very plain, ordinary person.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: When reading a story my imagination is entirely and most vividly with the persons of the story. When one of them is about to become the victim of a misunderstanding I find myself simply longing that he will somehow escape it, and this never mind whether the story is good, bad or indifferent.
Limitations depend entirely on the extent to which my interest is aroused.
No, far less trouble from solid geometry.
Response depends entirely on how much the thing described, well or ill, interests me.
Each its own picture.
Not a bit, unless I resent them as images. But suggestion, leaving me to do the rest, is what I most enjoy.
I do not know.
As tools? No.
Inez Haynes Irwin: I would sayyesto all these questions.I enjoy fiction intensely. All my life I have been the easy prey of fiction writers. Allowing that sometimes the mind gets fatigued and ceases to register impressions (although I do not remember ever to have had this experience) I would say that I saw, heard, tasted, smelled and felt all the things the author wanted me to see, hear, taste, smell and feel. I do seem in imagination actually to feel physical pain when the author wishes me to do so. Recently while suffering from an attack of grippe I had to stop reading a novel, Dorothy Speare'sDancers in the Dark, because the opening chapters described the fatigue of a group of girls who had danced all night. Their fatigue added so much to my weakness that I could not go on with the story. I remember once reading an essay by John Burroughs onThe Apple. When I had finished it, I had to go out and buy an apple to eat, although ordinarily I don't care for apples.
I am particularly susceptible to color in writing; and I find that I enjoy particularly the work of those writers who have studied art or have been artists. Du Maurier's books were a great joy to me and if Hergesheimer had nothing else to interest me, I think I should read him for the wonderful color arrangements in his descriptions.Java Headis remarkable in this respect. Robert Chambers has some of this color quality too; so, of course, to an extraordinary degree, has Conrad.
The pictures I see in my imagination are always colored as the author directs me to color them.
I do not think details are blurred in my imagined version of the author's picture—except when I have read too hurriedly or skipped.
I have studied arithmetic, algebra, plane geometry and solid geometry. The higher the mathematics the better I liked it. I was exceptionally stupid in arithmetic but I enjoyed plane and solid geometry enormously. It appealed to my imagination.
I am not quite sure that I understand what this questionmeans. Of course highly imaginative writers—especially if they have the great technical gift of connotative writing—can start your imagination with a broken phrase, can keep it working long after their words have stopped. It is as though they left echoes in one's mind. I think H. G. Wells makes this magic in my mind more often than any other writer that I know. Although I am half inclined to say that Henry James—who can also involve me in a maze of obscurity—is his equal if not his superior in this respect.
I am sure that each case produces its individual vision.
I don't remember ever formulating this while reading; but of course I realize that an author may have a too explicit style.
As to readingvs.writing. I think not, because it has never occurred to me that there could be any such difference.
In writing description, I always do try to appeal to the five senses of my reader. Perhaps this is so because in the writing courses which I took at Radcliffe College the instructors impressed it on us to do that.
Will Irwin: Answering generally the complex questions under the head: In reading writers who are "my men," as Stevenson, Wells, Anatole France, I find myself seeing the scenes in my imagination. The fight inDavid Balfour, the meeting of "Pontius Pilate" and "Laelius Lamia" inLe Procurateur de Judée, are to me as though I had witnessed them. I hear the sounds, but I can not say with truth that I taste the flavors or experience the smells. That doubtless is a matter of individual peculiarity. I have almost no sense of smell. On the other hand, I often see the colors most vividly. That again comes from individual peculiarity—I take the greatest delight in color. In a treatise on dreams which I have read recently the author says that dreams are like photographs; that they have no color, only one low tone and white. If that is so, I must be a freak. I am always dreaming in colors—as a few nights ago of seeing a procession in russet browncarrying rose-colored banners. Sometimes my imagination, in reading, reproduces the sense of touch, and occasionally the sense of pain. When I "see things with my eyes shut," I think the image is usually blurred and lacking in detail except for one central figure. But I do usually see such pictures in colors. I perceive what you are driving at in your question about solid geometry. I run true to form. Other mathematics did not interest me. I loathed arithmetic and algebra and I quit trigonometry from absolute boredom. But I was a sharp at geometry, both plane and solid.
I think that the mere concept of an author whom I recognize as one of my men will often set me to imagining things beyond those which he has described. By the same token I am sometimes bored by over-detailed description. I can not say, however, that I have stock pictures for persons and things which come within the limits of my experience. I do, however, for categories of persons and things which I have not seen—as a cavalier, a Zulu chief or a king on his throne. The visual faculty of my mind works in the same manner when I am reading a story as when I am writing one. In both cases I have a succession of color-pictures.
Certainly I use these things as tools of my trade—especially the picture faculty. One analytical passage in Barrett Wendell's treatise on Shakespeare has been very useful to me. He shows that Shakespeare's magic consists largely in creating a succession of haunting pictures in the mind. Since I absorbed that principle I have analyzed other magic styles and found this their secret. I have tried to follow in my poor way. I also try to use the tactile style. As it is a thing generally beyond me, I avoid dragging in the sense of smell. I do use sounds a great deal, however.
Charles Tenney Jackson: As to reading a story my imagination goes more to an author's pictures than his plot. I am rather coldly critical about plots and most ofthem show their ragged spots to me, lapses, improbabilities and negligences. But I like to have the chap show me a setting that seems real. If it's the sea islands, I want their colorful warmth; the Yukon, I want its snows and grim menace to the human actors. People are so much alike that a story does not move me because a writer attempts to show me their differences in different settings. My idea is that human nature reacts exactly the same everywhere. In other words, answering query III if an author gives me a hurricane I want that vivid, smashing, either by description or suggestion, and I don't give a durn who lives through it to rescue the girl. I know to start with that she'll be pulled out. There are certain banal things in either reading or writing fiction that you can't get away from; so I slide past 'em to see how the minor keys can be played.
Frederick J. Jackson: When I read a story I live it, that is, if the author has a sureness of touch with his characters and action that is convincing to me. Some authors I can not read at all. I won't read them. It's a waste of time. They don't get over with me. What I consider a perfect story is one in which the author can make me suffer with his characters, laugh with them, play with them, make my eye look through the sights of an aimed rifle, let my finger be on the trigger.
To the things I "see with my eyes shut" there are few limitations, the pictures are colored, real, the details are distinct.
My response is not limited to the degree with which the author describes and makes vivid. A mere hint suffices to draw a really definite picture in my mind. If the author doesn't spoil my own picture with too damned many cloying details I'm better satisfied. I dislike wading through paragraph after paragraph of detailed description, unless an accurate picture is necessary in order to give a complete understanding of certain action or certain moves made by a character.
I carry that dislike for detailed description into my own work. If I use more than one sentence of description I wince. I like to convey a picture, a real picture in as few words as possible. I like to put action into my description, into my picture of a setting.
I never have stock pictures. A village church? Immediately before my mind passes a parade of all the village churches I have ever seen, in villages or movie lots.
My dislike for description applies to characters as well as scenery. A hint here and there, characterization—things that will make each reader furnish the details he likes best. I might have described them in detail—mere words to tell how they appear in my picture. Really now, when you read about characters, doesn't your mind supply a picture of the physical man? A man to your liking, unhampered by clogging, useless words? Didn't characterization do that? If you have a leaning toward dark heroes, you conceive him to be dark. If to your mind a guy with red hair is the real Peruvian gooseberry as the main character, red headed he'll be in your mental picture. Etc., etc.
Is there any difference in behavior of your imagination when you are reading stories and when writing them? I live with my characters both in reading and writing, butoh!what a difference. In writing, I have to work out the problems; in reading, the problems have been worked out by the author. It's traveling with a sled, but one is going up-hill and the other down-grade.
Mary Johnston: Impossible to answer this fully. Sometimes there is a high degree of reality, at other times less. Depends upon the amount of energy that is functioning, energy and attention.
Yes, it is possible to see things with your eyes shut. I see them colored, in the round, and at times in motion. Not always in minute detail. Often only a general impression.
No more trouble from solid geometry.
As to response, if you have the concept, you can produce the appropriate phenomena. Individual pictures usually. Sometimes a composite or an idealization.
Prefer things to be suggested rather than minutely described.
Probably a difference as to reading and writing.
They are tools of life—therefore of one's work also.
John Joseph: If it is a reallygoodstory my imagination reacts to all the emotions and sensations mentioned except "physical pain." Very few stories belong to this class, however.
The author's "pictures" (in good stories) are reproduced in every detail, and distinctly. My mental pictures often go far beyond anything the author has actually described. I have no "stock" pictures; every "cowboy" and "village church" differs from all the others.
There is little difference in "behavior of imagination" whether reading or writing. I think that all these points are valuable to the writer.
Lloyd Kohler: In reading a story I am very apt to puzzle out in my own mind the outcome of the story long before the end is reached. Often the author's ending of the story, however, is radically different from what my own imagination had planned. Sometimes I can't overcome the idea that my own solution would have bettered the story; at other times I can easily see that the author's solution was vastly superior to my own.
In writing a story, or planning a story to write, my imagination generally runs—well, we'll say "wild." For instance: I may carefully plan a certain climax—and then find when the story is finally written that the first climax has been substituted for a more fitting one which flew into my mind during the last stages of the writing.
I don't want to commit myself on this question—I can't even agree with myself regarding the different angles of it. But I will say that when reading a story generally I do see in my imagination the characters, action and setting,though perhaps not so clearly as if looking at the actual scene. The vividness of the picture, of course, depends upon the clearness and vividness of the author. It depends also on just how familiar I am with the picture presented by the author.
The pictures described by an author which "I see with my eyes shut" are more in black and white. The details are very apt to be indistinct.
Plane geometry was exceedingly easy for me, but with another restless spirit I put to sea, consequently I can't say how I would have fared with the solid variety.
My response is not necessarily limited to the exact degree to which the author describes. It depends on how familiar I am with that which the author attempts to make vivid. The very thought of some things would set me to producing as vividly, perhaps, even more vividly, than the author himself. On the other hand, if the description were unfamiliar the response would likely be limited.
I don't believe that I have stock pictures for anything. If I have, some bit of description is bound to stick to me that will allow the thing to be individualized. Two cowboys are no more apt to be alike than two business men.
Harold Lamb: Yes, the imagination reproduces the story-world completely. Although not so fully with sounds as with sight, touch, smell. Perhaps the fact that I am nearly half deaf may have something to do with this.
About sensations it is hard to find the right word. Of course reading of a slashed finger does not give a resultant pain in any finger. It may give, however, a vivid mental image of pain insome finger. This is apt to be more annoying and enduring than a thumb actually cut by a knife.
The strength of the imagery is, logically, in proportion to the skill of the writer in creating his story-world. Reading Knut Hamsun'sHungercaused a more active mind distress thanLes Miserables.Les Miserableswas worse (that is, stronger) thanQuo Vadis. By this last I do notmean to raise the standard of Scandinavia over Poland. Knut Hamsun's tale was fashioned to reproduce the imagery of hunger completely, and it was marvelously done. As compared with the actual sensation it was more painful. I mean retrospectfully painful. At certain times I have been rather hungry. But a full meal always banished the distress. No after-impress of pain remained. But, walking the streets of Copenhagen in the person of Knut Hamsun's young man, I never had any satisfaction from gorging after starving. He—I—always threw up.
So with other sensations. But the most vivid sensations received from the printed word are those that have been experienced in life. Such as pain from frostbite, suffocation under water, drowsiness.
As to limitations of imagination, I do not know of any. Images are distinct. Colored as in the story. When color is lacking, I seem to supply it. Brown, green, gray are always present. (An artist explains that these are the neutral tints.) White, blue and red come into place as described, but less often volunteer. Black, yellow and purple almost never volunteer and when the printed word summons are sketched hastily.
Poor in all mathematics, least deficient in plane and solid geometry.
Seem to reproduce more in imagination than the author sets forth and have always thought that most readers did likewise. I find that continually I am snubbed back by a fresh word as to setting in the course of a story.
No stock pictures.
As to readingvs.writing, the cart before the horse, and behind.
Tools of trade? I have not puzzled about the psychology of a reader.
Sinclair Lewis: My imagination reproduces thus occasionally. In colors, details distinct. Less trouble with solid geometry. A mere concept will set me to reproducing just as vividly. No stock pictures. Do not resent abundantimages. Imagination is more active in writing than in reading.
Hapsburg Liebe: If a story really interests me, I feel everything, see everything, clearly. Reading of a man on a desert makes me thirsty. Writing of the same thing makes me thirsty. I cuss, cry and fight with the hero.
I did not study geometry. Never could study anything much.
If I read "He found himself in a dense woodland," my imagination makes the rest; I see pines, oaks, etc., as well as the woods. I think most other readers are like this; that's why they don't like detail.
Unless I'm careful, I have stock pictures for such things as logging-camps, etc. Often I catch myself and make myself see it differently, make the creek run the other way, and so on—and it's harder than you'd think. The last camp I worked in (there was a sawmill in connection) is always coming back to me, and I've had a devil of a time putting a thicket of laurel where the mill stood. This sounds crazy, but I'm trying to answer your questions.
There is little, if any, difference in my behavior when reading stories and writing them. I get "all het up" in either case, if there's any reason for it.
"Tools of the trade?" I forget everything like that when at work, I regret to say, though sometimes I take pains to see how some real author has got his effects.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: I actually imagine—envisage—everything that goes on. If the writer has told it at all clearly I see and hear everything. I smell or taste nothing—my imagination does not go so far. I feel no pain nor sense of touch except in very familiar things like bitter cold, tropical heat, ropes, gun-shot in the leg and the like. The scenes I see are all in "black and white" much like the illustrations in magazines, or rather more like a memory of an actual happening. I see bright sunlights and deep shades, but seldom see colors even though the heroine wears a yellow waist. The main details are distinct,the rest merely passing impressions. Sometimes an especially vivid story brings out a lasting remembrance and I have it as almost an actual happening.
Solid geometry gave me no more trouble than any of my mathematics, but, at that, it is a terrible arraignment to numbers.
My response is generally limited to just about what the author describes. Naturally I do not know what is coming and so do not give much room to imaginings. The only thing that peeves me is to go through a lot of fine description only to find that it had nothing whatever to do with the progress of the story; was just slung there by the author for the sake of more words, words, words! But description in line with the action, or used to bring out the story more clearly, is a delight.
I have stock pictures only for that with which I am not familiar, like the interior of a submarine. All sub-sea stories to me might well be written around the same old boat, as that is the boat I see. But cowboys, cattle, people, village churches or vaudeville theaters all are individual. Sometimes even I find a writer who seems to know his subject well enough to give me a description exactly fitting some place I know. Then I read him with great interest. In my own writing I have an individual in mind whether I write a description or not. I never write of things I must needs use a "stock" illustration for—only of course as for brief mention. If my hero had once been caught undersea in a submarine I might mention that incident, but to write a story about it—never.
Which brings me to my own imagination when writing. Indeed there is a great difference! When I write I see everything. I see all my characters in their widely separated haunts, and right in the "center" so to speak is a bright spot like a spot-light and seemingly my characters come out of the semi-darkness and enter that light for the moment of their action. It is somewhat like rehearsing a play, only far more vivid to me, for the scene is constantlychanging; instead of the scene changing under the spotlight, the light moves over the story-stage and spots first one location and then another. I have difficulty sometimes deciding which characters to put on or to deal with next and sometimes withdraw one who has done much and fire him completely. Then, too, when I hit certain scenes I have so many thoughts and things crowd so swiftly I whack away, hitting any old letter and spacing weirdly for the sake of speed. In some scenes I weep. If I try to stifle my emotion my thoughts falter. Often in the reading I wonder what there was to sniffle over when I wrote, but sometimes the best part of the story is right there. Often I soberly type off something that makes me laugh, real sudden humor, when I come to read it. Often it is something I didn't realize was funny when I put it down. Usually, like the sob-stuff, it requires considerable revision to make it presentable. I am glad I can feel the emotions so strongly and hope it will stay with me. I consider it a valuable "tool" and try not to abuse it.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Writing stories keeps my imagination alert. Reading stories, the keeping of my imagination alert depends on the stimuli—the art of the author. In one case the imagination is in harness; in the other it is loose in a pasture, and may be asleep.
A story has to be pretty vivid to react on my physical senses. Zola's novels, for example.
I rarely visualize, see with my eyes shut, except by conscious effort or intention. Then I can, easily.
Solid and spherical geometry gave me less trouble than algebra. I had to thinkhardto work out some of the original problems, though, but it was a satisfying experience.
The mere concept is sufficient for a vivid impression, but provided it impinges on something in my emotional make-up that is already susceptible or sensitive. For instance, the thought of a keen knife drawn across the palm of the hand—you don't have to go any farther; you don'thave to describe it. But something else you might, and even then it might leave me cold. I think the personal equation figures in here tremendously.
No, I don't think I have stock pictures, not as a rule, unless some particular thing in my experience has made a deep impression. If you say cathedral, I'm likely to see the one at Cologne, while I wouldn't think of Notre Dame at all. The latter issui generis—not a cathedral. It's Notre Dame. Say Notre Dame and I get it.
Rose Macaulay: Depends entirely on how well and forcibly the story is written. Most stories convey no impression of any kind to me. My imagination pictures are just like what I see with my eyes open, I think. No solid geometry. My response limited by the author. Having stock pictures depends on the description. Resentment as to images depends on whether described well or tediously. A great deal of difference when reading and writing. As to tools, don't quite follow this question.
Crittenden Marriott: I taste through imagination to some extent. As to pain presented in fiction, I "choke up" on some stories—Mrs. Abbott's for instance. Can see images with eyes either open or shut. Details blurred. Solid geometry easier. Response limited by the author. I don't describe much, except when I am trying to please the women with meteorologic disquisitions; then I sling words. As to tools, no.
Homer I. McEldowney: It depends more or less upon the ability of the author, I should say. I have a pretty fair imagination and if the writer gives me half a chance, I believe that I see just about what he saw—or sets down in print. That, I think, applies quite as truly to taste, sound and smell, as to sight. I've read yarns that gave me an odd tightening through the chest and which, if they didn't actually "raise my hair on end," did produce a fine stand of "goose flesh" at the back of my neck. I've caught myself with the palms of my hands moist and cold. If these are sound indications of inner turmoil, then I'm gettingall the kick there is in a yarn—with no transformer reducing the voltage.
Nope, solid geometry didn't give me any more trouble than other mathematics—and a damned sight less than a five-hour course in algebra that I just plugged through with a weak-kneed D!
I don't believe in stock pictures. I haven't them, and hope I'm never turning out stuff at such a rate that I actually have to employ them. I get a lot of fun out of my characters and scenes. To me they have individuality. I have never tried it, but I suspect that my use of a stock picture or character would result in a lightly veneered but wooden yarn.
I believe that for the most part I really get into the stories I write rather more deeply than into those I read,—with some exceptions, perhaps.
Ray McGillivray: To some degree imagination supplies an adumbrance of all the sensations you mention. With me auditory imagery is strongest. Anything appealing through any sense to my notion of the dramatic, curious or interesting I remember in fairly accurate (often exaggerated, I'll admit) detail. Solid geometry was my shark subject in mathematics. Calculus was where I resigned.
My greatest handicap to pleasure in reading fiction lies in the fact that unless characters are (1) left automatons, or (2) portrayed vividly like Hamsun's "Isak," Hardy's "Tess," or Stribling's "Birdsong,"—my concepts and the author's get to quarreling from the drop of the hat. Stating it briefly, my favorite authors are Hamsun, Turgenieff, Dickens and Nick Carter. In dime novels I write my own story as I read.
Stock types of characters hang on a writer only when he is trying to vivify a setting or situation with which he is not thoroughly familiar—or when he never has taken the pains to look closely at people in the endeavor to form constructive estimates of them. Of course weariness of bodyand mind, too—butthenthe chap behind the pencil or Chatterbox No. 5 is not a writer but merely a dumb Will-To-Work.
The only difference in the way imagination works when reading and writing—so far as I know—lies in the fact that in reading every ascending step in the flight of story development opens a whole new gamut of conjecture, questioning and hope; in writing the imagination has to cross and recross, mount and descend the same space too often for any such tremendous scope. I verily believe a wide-awake writer of adventure fiction actually reads three novels every time he completes the perusal of seventy thousand words of an interesting story written by some one else. Vice versa, he crosses his own steps three times or more—three hundred might be a better figure—on his ownpièce de resistance.
Helen Topping Miller: Reading is to me a sort of orgy of the imagination. I see, feel, hear, smell and experience every sensation written into the story—more keenly, I think sometimes, than the author who writes it. Naturally, I supply my own pictures for the setting—if a writer describes a country road I see—not his road, but the roads I knew as a child back in rural Michigan. I do not know whether I "see things with my eyes shut" or not. I know that when any idea is presented my imagination gives one leap and is gone. I live, walk, see, feel and hear the scene, experience the emotions of the characters, sense everything distinctly. There is no blurring, rather the impression is painfully keen.
Mathematics were an abomination to me. I scrambled through them as easily as possible and forgot them with cheerful alacrity.
I certainly consider my ability to experience every sensation imaginatively as my most important tool. It seems to me the most valuable and essential factor in trying to write fiction—the thing the canny Irishman called the "ability to get inside other people's skins."
Thomas Samson Miller: Imagination and visualization: Ifeellocation—the very hue of the sky, feel of the air, the scents and sounds of nature. I am less vivid on human actions and sayings. I am not so closely in sympathy with human beings as with nature. It is my greatest drawback in fiction writing.
I do not carry mental "stock pictures"; that would be reducing novelizing to bookkeeping. Certain authors do it, just as the same keep to one successful form of story and repeat, even in time-worn phraseology, so that one finds "Of a sudden" five to ten times in a single short story.
Behavior of imagination inreadingandwritingstories: The stories I read are so utterly beyond my art that there is no comparison. Inwritingthe imagination is intense; onelivesin the story, which one can not do in another story, any more than a violinist can reach the depths and heights of feeling of the composers whose composition he plays. No reader gets out of a story a tenth part of the feeling and visualization the author puts into it, or, perhaps, thought he put into it.
Anne Shannon Monroe: If the story I am reading "gets" me at all, I swing full into it, become absorbed and follow breathlessly through; if it doesn't "get" me, I don't go on.... I see the characters, the place—it is all as if it had been an actual experience. Sounds, tastes, odors,—it's all real in my mind,ifthe writer has made it real on paper.... I think the atmosphere of the story gets into my sense more keenly than anything else,—the feeling of it—beauty of scene if beauty is created on the page—as in Hudson's writing.
Pictures I see in imagination are as they are pictured by the creator of them: the intense glare of a desert under sun—it's blinding just to think about: the deep rich purple-green of heavy old forests—it's almost suffocating: some writers make me feel these things just as if I had seen them.
All mathematics were impossible to me, solid geometryno more so than that whole idiocy, from the multiplication table up.
If the presentation is true, the mere concept starts my mind off on jaunts of its own.
I donothave stock pictures; each character, scene, place is new, fresh—a creation.
Idoresent too many images. I could not wade through all ofMain Street: whileLulu Bettwas a delight.
Difference in behavior of imagination when reading or writing stories? Well, in one way, no: if my imagination is not fired, I do not read and neither do I write. Often when I start to read a story it suggests one of my own, and I am off on my own adventure, instead of following the one the author has put before me. But if he has put it so as to catch my interest, I follow him with the same enthusiasm with which I write.
L. M. Montgomery: Yes, when I read a story Iseeeverything, exactly as if I were looking at an actual scene. Ihearthe sounds andsmellthe odors. When I readPickwick PapersI have to make many an extra sneak to the pantry, so hungry do I become through reading of the bacon and eggs and milk punch in which the characters so frequently revel. I never feelphysicalpain when I read a story, no matter how intense the suffering described may be. But I feelmentalpain so keenly that sometimes I can hardly bear to continue reading. Yet I do not dislike this sensation. On the contrary I like it. If I can have a jolly good howl several times in a book I am its friend for life. Yet, in every-day existence, I am the reverse of a tearful or sentimental person. No book do I love as I loveDavid Copperfield. Yet during my many re-readings I must have wept literal quarts over David's boyish tribulations. And ghost stories that make me grow actually cold with fear are such as my soul loveth.
I can "see things," with eyes shut or open, colors and all. Sometimes I see them mentally—that is, I realize that they are produced subjectively and are under the controlof my will. But very often, when imagination has been specially stimulated, I seem really to see them objectively. In this case, however, I never see landscapes or anything butfaces—and generally grotesque or comical faces. I never see a beautiful face. They crowd on my sight in a mob, flashing up for a second, then instantly filled by others. I always enjoy this "seeing things" immensely, but I can not do it at will.
The very name of geometry was a nightmare to me. I decline to discuss the horrible subject at all. Yet I loved algebra and had a mild affection for arithmetic. These things are predestinated.
I have no "stock pictures" as a reader. I generally see things pretty much as the writer describes them—though certainly not as the "movie" people seem to see them! This is especially true of places and things. But very few writers have the power to make me visualize their characters, even where they describe them minutely. Illustrations generally make matters worse. I detest illustrations in a story. It is only when there is some peculiarly striking and restrained bit of description attached to a character that I canseeit. For example: when R. L. Stevenson inDr. Jekyllsays that there was something incredibly evil about "Hyde"—I am not quoting his exact words—I can see "Hyde" as clearly as I ever saw anything in my life. As a rule, I think the ability to describe characters so that readers may see them as clearly as they see their settings is a very rare gift among writers.
Yes, as a reader Idoresent having too many images formed for me. I don't want too much description of anything or too many details in any description.
When Ireada story, Iseepeople doing things in a certain setting; when Iwritea story Iamthe people myself andlivetheir experiences.
Frederick Moore: My imagination reproduces the story-world of the author to the extent that the author has given me pictures or has suggested them to me. I actually—mentally—seeand hear all given to me in the story. I can not say I smell or taste, except the reference is to something already in my memory. For instance, if an author refers to the smell of a whaling-ship, or a bilge-water forecastle, I smell it in memory—that is, I know it. But I doubt if I could create the smell that might be referred to in filling a helium-gas balloon, because that is beyond my ken. If it should smell like, say, rotten oranges, I might get a reaction that would be fairly accurate. I can not say that I feel pain presented in a story in any degree. The strength of the suggestion on my imagination depends largely on the skill of the writer in transmitting his idea to me. Of course, I suffer more mental pain in seeing a cat injured than I do in reading of how several men were killed. In the latter case shock is missing, yet I have seen more men killed than I have cats hurt. There is a difference in the behavior of imagination when reading and when writing—while reading, my imagination is being spoon-fed; in writing, it is on "high," climbing a hill and watching the road carefully. And there is a difference in concentration, for in writing I am emptying my subconscious reservoir, while in reading I am refilling it. After finishing a story, I find that a lapse of time is necessary to allow the subconscious (or what I presume to be the subconscious) to refill. I couldn't write stories on an eight-hour basis—if I wanted to.
I really see things with my eyes shut, in the colors which I may desire to give them. Details are distinct if I care to turn the "spot-light" on them, so to speak—in other words, to the point on which I want to concentrate for description. The detail I am working on is distinct, but if I want to hold the image long enough for extended use I do not attempt to hold it steadily. I find that impossible. But I can make the image repeat itself without limit. I doubt if anybody can hold an image, even of something that has just been looked at, longer than a verysmall fraction of a second. And by this I don't mean a succession of "flashes" but a fixed image.
Solid geometry gave me less trouble than other mathematics, because I could visualize it better. However, I have been able to copy from mental images of a problem I have seen written out, or printed on a page, a problem required in an examination. That is, I have found it easier to recall that problem as I saw it in figures, and copy it, than I have to attack the problem and work it to the required answer. I presume everybody else can do the same. In examinations in artillery I have been able to recall images of cross-sections so readily as to be able to reproduce them in rough sketches or to give the required description. But if the question related to something that I hadheardin a lecture, I might well miss the question entirely. I show very poor results in written examinations relating to book matter—unless the questions relate to pages with such type arrangement or sub-heads that I can recall the entire page mentally and pick out of the image what I want. I may know a thing very well practically, and not be able to pass as high in it, as something I have acquired wholly from a book. I believe text-books on all subjects should be more visual.
The response of my imagination in some cases is dependent on the skill at description of the writer, especially in things or scenes with which I am not familiar. But a mere concept will set me reproducing if the matter deals with something with which I am familiar. By this I do not mean to say that my imagination will not work except with things with which I am familiar—I am referring to degree of response.
No, I do not have stock pictures for anything. I may think first of some picture in memory, and from that basis create the character, the place and the events. However, imagination probably requires something in the nature of a "feeder." What the imagination of a personblind from birth does would be most interesting. If a person had been blind up to, say, twenty and then recovered sight, it should be interesting to know what kind of mental picture he had had of, for instance, a full-rigged ship.
I have considered all these matters as tools of my trade. Without them, I doubt if it is possible to have the trade.
Talbot Mundy: If I pick up a book, say, on India, and provided the book is sufficiently well written not to "get my goat," I am in India instantly. I see, smell, hear and taste India. Sometimes I almost touch it. The same with any other country or place. India merely serves as an illustration. I have to be brought back to my surroundings with a wrench.
Sound is perhaps the least real of the sensations. I get the effect of the sound without the sound itself. The louder the sound, the less real, I rather think. For instance, if a gun goes off I don't jump out of my skin, and I don't think I hear the report—or, if so, I rather see than hear it. Colors are absolutely real, although rather more beautiful than in actual experience.
This is a very difficult question to answer, however. The world of imagination and ideas seems to me to be a separate world in which we experience all the sensations above referred to, but experience them differently. The sting—the element of personal suffering—to use the Christian formula, the cross—seems to be missing in this world of imagination; so that, although the cross and its consequences—a strong smell and its discomfort, pain and its distress—may all be present in the story, they are seen objectively and have practically no physical reaction except that of conscious pleasure.
On the other hand, ideas, emotions, contrasts between right and wrong do have a pronounced physical effect. I frequently sweat or grow angry or get prodigiously excited while reading—but always because of an idea that is concretely presented.
Perhaps I can put it best this way: Suppose that wetorture the heroine. The most blood-curdling description of her agonies would probably excite my curiosity and might perhaps tickle a sadistic vein, but would certainly not cause me physical distress nor even mental disturbance. But the question whether she shall be tortured or not—the right and the wrong of it—the low-down arguments used on the one side, the high standards raised on the other, would arouse me almost to frenzy, and the blood would go coursing through my veins twice as fast as usual.
I don't have to shut my eyes to "see things." I see them more easily with eyes wide open. Possibly because I am short-sighted, the imaginary things that I see in that way are often more "real" than the real world. The pictures are invariably colored. Never black and white.
My response is not limited by any means to the degree in which the author describes and makes vivid. As often as not, too much description has the reverse effect.
I never studied solid geometry.
I think that in most instances vision is individual and new; but I rather suspect that things I have seen at different times and in different places form the store from which I draw apparently fresh illustrations as required. This, however, is another very hard question to answer correctly and really could not be answered without keeping tabs on one's self for a month or two.
Reading is better fun than writing. Therefore, when reading, the imagination is less rebellious and does its work more swiftly and easily. Otherwise I think there is little if any difference.
Kathleen Norris: I can't say that I ever get an actual sense emotion from what I write, that is, in taste or smell, but I have felt my mood very definitely affected by the experiences my characters are experiencing, and I frequently confuse them with real persons for an hour or two, and will find myself saying at lunch, (say) "Oh, a woman told me this morning ..." forgetting that the woman is of my own creating.
One would see things in this way pretty much as one would remember a meeting with somebody close and vital, or anticipating such a meeting. It would be natural to imagine the room, the sunshine, the gowns, etc., etc.
I never even finished grammar school.
No, it seems to me the only books worth while (that is, in the sense of popular fiction, etc.,) are the books that stimulate fresh imaginings of one's own.
I hate to read a book that doesnotproduce an individual vision and so add to one's stock, as it were. The chief delight of reading seems to me exploratory.
On the contrary, a writer who can form images is a great writer. But having images distorted or ill-formed is merely tiresome, and annoys one with a sense of wasting time.
Yes, all the difference between eating a meal and cooking it. (Incidentally I would always prefer the cooking.)
My brother-in-law, Frank Norris, once said that when he really wished carefully to depict a scene, he appealed to each of the five senses in turn; and to a greater or lesser degree I don't think any picture can be painted without one or more of these "tools."
Anne O'Hagan: It seems to me that the only possible answer to this question is: "It depends upon the genius of the author." There are villages in England I could find my way about in, there are drawing-rooms in which I perfectly see the furnishings, because of Jane Austen and Thackeray. I have grown hungry reading Dickens' meals. I suffered utter fatigue, misery and coldness crawling back to the farm with "Hetty" inAdam Bede; and I think I had something the same actual feeling of physical exhaustion in reading the Italian home scenes inThe Lost Girl. But for the most part the impressions are impressions only, not experiences.
Pictures are colored when I actually have them, and details distinct.
All mathematics gave me trouble, but I think that theclimax of despair was reached in calculus instead of solid geometry.
Response follows vivid suggestion as well as detailed description—when there is response.
I suppose that if the author of the village church or the cowboy did not cause me to see a definite creation, I have a property-room church or cowboy which my imagination would fit into the story. But I think with a little help I am able to construct a new one for the story in question.
Probably yes. That is, I should be bored by not being allowed to use my own imagination a little.
Yes. Only the masters of literature can absorb my mind with their characters, create a world which takes the place of the actual one for the time being; but when I am writing (with most pleasure and most of the feeling of creation, I mean—most successfully) I can be absorbed in my characters and can live in their world without for a moment believing that I am a master of literature. I mean by this that I know from my own experience how muchrealcreation is involved in the production of that which is not great or fiction.
No.
Grant Overton: I often see the people, the action and above all the setting. I do not know that I hear the sounds or taste the flavors or smell the smells or feel any impacts. I do feel what the people of the story feel, at least in the more emotional moments. I have suffered exquisite pangs along with my characters, have been thrilled with them, have despaired with them. To me fiction is merely a form of communicating feeling.
I do not see things with my eyes shut but with them open. I seldom notice details. What I see I can not describe, except as an effect. That is why I can not write descriptions full of physical detail.
Plane geometry is the only mathematical subject that gave me trouble. I don't think I ever studied solid geometry, but I undoubtedly passed an examination in it.
My response is wholly determined by the emotional content of the narrative and the emotional activity of the characters though conditioned by the skill of the author in verbal presentation.
I should probably image the village church from one I had seen. I should have no picture of the cowboy unless emotionally I found myself akin to him.
I do not mind how many images are formed for me but I resent nothing but images. I want, above all, to feel something.
Yes, my imagination when writing and when reading is totally different, but I do not know whether I can say how. In writing my imagination labors often painfully. In reading—but I suppose it is the difference between listening to music and playing some instrument yourself.
I can not answer as to tools. The five senses mean little to me when it comes to writing or reading. I should say that the appeal was to my intellectual senses if there is such a thing.
Sir Gilbert Parker: Everything is seen clearly. Better at geometry than anything else. Each case has its own vision. Do not resent multiplicity of images. It is the duty of the author to command my vision.
Hugh Pendexter: I get all the drama very clearly or else I quit. I must have the geography of the story in mind and often post myself on the locale with use of a map. I respond thoroughly to the comedy or tragedy of a story and read myself into it. I react more quickly to pathos than to the infliction of physical pain. Torture of a victim does not torture me. A child saving pennies to buy a garish, impossible tie for his old grandfather probably would bring tears. If a road or river is pictured, I must see it as though walking over or along it. I do not believe my imagination goes much beyond what the writer supplies, as then it becomes my story and not his and I can finish it without bothering to finish the book.
I really see things with my eyesopen. The details areas distinct as any my physical vision can reveal. They are not outlines, nor black and white studies, but as they actually would exist as to form and color. I see most clearly those scenes I write about.
Mathematics never intrigued me. My recollection of solid geometry is that it was to me the delirium tremens of plane geometry. My two sons find mathematics absorbing. I abhor mathematics.
As to degree of my response, that is explained above.
Much difference. When writing a story my imagination supplies a wealth of detail that does not appear in the yarn. If I have to supply overmuch for the other fellow's yarn, I quit, as noted above.
The next query is rather blind to me. My best "tool of trade" is my immediate vision of what I wish to put into type.
Clay Perry: I visualize very much; in reading a story as well as in writing it. A story in which I am unable to visualize clearly annoys me. I want to go around the corners and see what the author sees. I suspect that an author who does not furnish the locale, color and plan which will enable me to see his story is careless. This goes for the characters, double. They should be seen clearly, I believe.
Sounds, I "hear," also, in the inner ear and taste the flavors with the tongue of imagination and sometimes my mouth waters to a pleasant flavor well pictured. To smells, being supersensitive anyway, the reaction is strong. To touch the reaction is not so strong, except in rare instances, mostly unpleasant suggestions, pain. I feel the pain if in sympathy with the character who suffers it, more than otherwise.
"Seeing things with my eyes shut" amounts to re-creation, through the stimuli of description, of a more or less familiar scene; or at least with a familiar scene the nucleus of the image built upon the stimuli. Details are distinct if description is vivid and, again, if the stimuli callup something which I have actually seen or experienced in the past that is akin to the scene or incident described.
Solid geometry gave me less trouble than any other mathematics and Lord knows the others gave me trouble!
I believe the concept stimulates me to imaging "what lies over the hill" in many cases, the "behind the scenes," perhaps because of a habit in my own writing of trying to set a stage "solid," not with mere "drops."
Stock pictures for stock "sets"? For a village church—a composite picture of the several dozen I had to attend when a boy, none of them the same exactly. For a cowboy, different stock pictures in different context. I think this depends largely on the manner and setting in which the object of character isfirstintroduced.
Yes, there is a difference in the behavior of my imagination when I am reading stories and when writing them. In reading, one has only to accept the author's concept; in writing, one has to consider and reject several and decide upon one. (There is, however, in reading, the tendency to look behind the scenes, which is perhaps a fainter manifestation of the selective impulse or artistic judgment habitual in the creation of a picture myself.)
I have thought of my reading constantly in connection with my writing. If a book or story is good, I get a stimulation from it, perhaps an inspiration, which, mingled with the profusion of other impulses and ideas, emerges, some time, as a part, or a tendency, in my own work. More often, however, I am astonished, when well started on a story of my own or when completing it, to run across another with a curious similarity of thought or philosophy—or perhaps, a contradictory philosophy in similar setting.
Michael J. Phillips: I try hard to visualize in important scenes. If I get stuck in a description I stop and visualize—hard. I don't see all the characters, but only the principal ones. I don't imagine the sounds unless I want to conjure up the effect of a sudden, alarming sound, like a shot, on the man or woman who hears it.
I do not taste the flavor of a story. I do not get rough or smooth contact nor physical pain. Rarely a story moves me to laughing aloud, and equally rarely, say twice a year in each case, does a story bring tears. My response to a good story—and it must be good—is the prickle down your back when he really puts it over. This may be at the finish or when one of the characters does an admirable or a clever thing in a way wholly admirable and noteworthy, and what is done is described by a master. Too much sophistication to get the kick that once I did, I suppose. A duel of words between two men in a love story over the girl, a battle of wits in which breeding and good sportsmanship are displayed, will produce the prickle down my spinal column quicker than exciting physical action.
I can not see the scenes with my eyes shut readily. It is only by effort, and they are in black and white. I can not visualize the faces of all my friends and relatives. The degree of nearness and dearness does not enter into visualization at all. Some strangers impress themselves on my mental retina, and I can not recall by shutting my eyes how some relative, perhaps in the next room, looks. I have a lot of fun visualizing a horse race with the jockeys wearing different colored jackets. This I use in the rare attempts I make to get to sleep when I do not fall instantly asleep on going to bed. I can't make it stick much. The colors get all mixed up. I have to keep telling myself which color my favorite wears.
I went to high school only a month or two in the second year, then quit to paint little white coffins in a casket factory, so you see solid geometry is a sealed book to me. Algebra was bone labor to me, but I was quite proud of myself when I solved a problem, and in some degree it was an attraction on that account.