To have been the author of "The Iliad" or of Beeton's "Book of Household Recipes" would have given him almost the same exaltation of authorship; and the thrill of worship which came over him when, one early day, a man who had actually had an article on the sugar bounties accepted by a commercial magazine was pointed out to him in the street, was one he never forgot; nor in after years did he ever encounter that transfigured contributor without an involuntary recurrence of that old feeling of awe.

No subsequent acquaintance with editorial rooms ever led him into materialistic explanations of that enchanted piece of work--a newspaper.

The editors might do their best--and succeed surprisingly--in looking like ordinary mortals, you might even know the leader-writers, and, with the very public, gaze through gratings into the subterranean printing-rooms,--the mystery none the less remained.

No exposure of editorial staffs or other machinery could destroy the sense of enchantment, as no amount of anatomy or biology can destroy the mystery of the human miracle.
So I suppose Nature first makes us in love with the tools we are to use, long before we have a thought upon what we shall use them.

Perhaps the first desire of the born writer is to be a compositor.