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CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS

BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

    I. A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION
   II. NOVELS AND AGNOSTICISM
  III. AMERICANISM IN FICTION
   IV. LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN
    V. THE MORAL AIM IN FICTION
   VI. THE MAKER OF MANY BOOKS
  VII. MR. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE
 VIII. THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS
   IX. EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN
    X. MODERN MAGIC
   XI. AMERICAN WILD ANIMALS IN ART




CONFESSIONS AND CRITICISMS.




CHAPTER I.

A PRELIMINARY CONFESSION.


In 1869, when I was about twenty-three years old, I sent a couple of
sonnets to the revived _Putnam's Magazine_. At that period I had no
intention of becoming a professional writer: I was studying civil
engineering at the Polytechnic School in Dresden, Saxony. Years before,
I had received parental warnings--unnecessary, as I thought--against
writing for a living. During the next two years, however, when I was
acting as hydrographic engineer in the New York Dock Department, I
amused myself by writing a short story, called "Love and Counter-Love,"
which was published in _Harper's Weekly_, and for which I was paid
fifty dollars. "If fifty dollars can be so easily earned," I thought,
"why not go on adding to my income in this