I sincerely wish I could suggest something, but it is too difficult a case—indeed it is next to an impossible one. You make a conclusive argument against your book: first, when you mention your age; second, when you state what your life has been. Experience of life  (not of books), is the only capital usable in such a book as you have attempted; one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new—& yours is new, since you are but 21. IⒶemendation do not see how any but a colossal genius can write a readable prose-book before he is 30 years old. Such books have been written, but never by any but gigantic geniuses—like those BrontèⒶemendation sisters, for instance. And yet even they were enabled to do it only because they had a capital of experience to draw from which was nearly as prodigious as their genius. Moderate talent can produce a readable book at 30 or 40, after a good, honest, diligent, pains-taking apprenticeship of 15 or 20 years with the pen; but moderate talent cannot do it without such age & such apprenticeship. You will have to produce & burn as much manuscript as the rest of us have done before your mill will yield something that is really worth printing. Ours is a trade which has to be learned—there is no getting around that requirement by any sort of possibility—& the average genius cannot learn it in five years, or ten either, unless he begins with a rich & varied capital of experience behind him.

By what you say, I conceive that the much the largest part of your capital is borrowed capital: borrowed from books—that is to say, paper money, borrowed from many foreign countries. There ir is a fearful discount upon that sort of currency in the commerce of literature.

Often a fair poem, or sermon, or volume of philosophy may be can be written by a gifted man, with no capital to draw from but imagination & a profound ignorance of life & men—but books of the sort which you have described, cannot.

If you have good reason to believe that you possess a really great & conspicuous genius, I would advise that you stick to your pen; but if you have reason to believe otherwise, I would advise you to put it aside or use it merely for your amusement.

I would not wound you for the world; but if I have nevertheless done it, you have your revenge, since I have sacrificed my day to you: for he that desires to do the best work he can, doth not put a part of his day’s steam into a letter, first, & then try Ⓐemendation work with a three-quarter head of it on a book afterward., you know. But no matter—the day is of no consequence, & I had a strong desire to say some things to you which I honestly believed might be of value & service to you.

I have been frank: one has seldom a right to be otherwise; but I have been far from meaning to be harsh.