Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. CASTLES IN SPAIN. The young man of literary tastes who desires to tfrite a masterpiece has a tolerably straight and narrow path laid out before him. He may find this path without difficulty, if he is in earnest. He simply has to spend half a dollar in pens and pads, and cover these pads with writing. And when the pads are at last covered with writing of more or less excellent English, if the aspirant for fame lives in New York, he walks at intervals of three weeks on lower Fifth Avenue and West Twenty- third street, visiting various publishing houses. He keeps up these little walks—they are admirable for the temper, and most beneficial from the standpoint of health—from six months to a year. At the end of that time, he consigns the manuscript to the waste- basket, or the inestimable happiness is at last granted him of correcting his first proofs. No doubt there ismuch to try the patience of the writer of a first book. But the path, at least, is not obscure. The struggles of Richard Bryce Textor to succeed as a novelist were quite extraordinary. He did not write merely to see his name in print. He had seen it in print already. Nor did he write merely for fame or money, or because he wished to adopt the profession of writing for his daily bread. He had not failed in several other professions. Indeed, as yet he had entered no profession, although he had just been graduated from the Columbia School of Law. As a law student, Textor's interest in the social and economic questions of the day had been so keenly excited that he had lived at the University Settlement in the slums of Delancey street, and had thoroughly identified himself with the work there. He had instructed little Hebrew boys in the elements of patriotism and of United States history. He had dan...