"It seems sixty miles,
anyhow."
"I don't doubt that," cried Carnegie, showing handsome teeth in a
smile. "I thought there must be some way of getting around it. But if
he had said thirty-five miles I'd have believed him, and thought him a
mighty good tramper into the bargain."
"Yet many who have never tramped under knapsack, blankets, and
tent-cloth would say, 'That's nothing!' and our poor voyager, who
really had made a record, would be consigned to oblivion. In all art,
even that of writing facts, one must exaggerate a little in order to
make the effect life-size--so to say."
"That's true enough," said Mrs. Vanderhoff. "It is so easy to sit
still and pass judgment upon those who exert themselves. When I hear a
person criticising a painting, a story, a building, a song who could
not draw a straight line, write a sentence correctly, build a cob-house
on just proportions, nor keep the key through 'Yankee Doodle,' I long
to insist upon his making a practical trial in such things before
daring to make a criticism. Yet it is a fact that artistic people of
every grade and type have to writhe under the criticisms of
ignoramuses, who could not accomplish the piece of work they scathingly
denounce if their lives depended upon it. I pick up a book and fling
it aside with the comment, 'It's not worth reading!' or I look over a
great vessel like this and say, 'How clumsily built!' but what if I
were doomed to write a similar book, to plan a great steamer--just
think of the results! I would never criticise again.
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