anything you can’t feel—it will be a failure—‘echoes nothing worth.’ This other yarn now—about this old woman. It’s not bad. The dialogue is clever—the climax simple and effective. And thank the Lord you’ve got a sense of humor. That’s mainly why you're no good at love stories, I believe. Nobody with any real sense of humor can write a love story.”
Emily didn’t see why this should be. She liked writing love stories—and terribly sentimental, tragical stories they were.
“Shakespeare could,” she said defiantly.
“You’re hardly in the Shakespeare class,” said Mr. Carpenter drily.
Emily blushed scorchingly.
“I know I’m not. But you said nobody.”
“And maintain it. Shakespeare is the exception that proves the rule. Though his sense of humor was certainly in abeyance when he wrote Romeo and Juliet. However, let’s come back to Emily of New Moon. This story—well, a young person might read it without contamination.”
Emily knew by the inflection of Mr. Carpenter’s voice that he was not praising her story. She kept silence and Mr. Carpenter went on, flicking her precious manuscripts aside irreverently.
“This one sounds like a weak imitation of Kipling. Been reading him lately?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Don’t try to imitate Kipling. If you must imitate, imitate Laura Jean Libbey. Nothing good about this but its title. A priggish little yarn. And Hidden Riches is not a story—it’s a machine. It creaks. It never made me forget for one instant that it was a story. Hence it isn’t a story.”
“I was trying to write something very true to life,” protested Emily.
“Ah, that’s why. We all see life through an illusion—even the most disillusioned of us. That’s why things
