I have hurried, I have scrambled, I have fought and cursed
and striven, but as an Artist only those hours that I have spent listening,
waiting, have been my real life.
"So it must be with you. You are here to listen. Never mind if they tell
you that story-telling is a cheap thing, a popular thing, a mean thing. It
is the instrument that is given to you and if, when you come to die you
know that, for brief moments, you have heard, and that what you have heard
you have written, Life has been justified.
"Nothing else can console you, nothing else can comfort you. There must be
restraint, austerity, discipline--words must come to you easily but only
because life has come to you with so great a pain ... the Artist's life is
the harshest that God can give to a man. Make no mistake about that.
Fortitude is the artist's only weapon of defence...."
Henry Galleon came over to Peter's chair and put his hand upon the boy's
arm.
"I am at the end of my work. I have done what I can. You are at the
beginning of yours. You will do what you can. I wish you good fortune."
A vision came to Peter. Through the open window, against the sheet of
stars, gigantic, was the Rider on the Lion.
He could not see the Rider's face.
A great exultation inflamed him.
At that instant he was stripped bare. His history, the people whom he knew,
the things that he had done, they were all as though they had never been.
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