Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1902 — Why She Couldn’t Improve. [ARTICLE]

Why She Couldn’t Improve.

It is a rather unsafe experiment to criticise a literary effort unless one knows all about it. The other evening a school girl went Into the library where the family were assembled to read what they supposed to be her latest composition. It was a description of a night in the woods, and when the school girl read that the sky was a glossy blue-black an artist sister interrupted her to say, gently: “Oh! my dear, that’s all wrong. Now, think; did you ever see the sky when It was glossy?” But the school girl only smiled and read on. She referred to a drink of water as a “cold Inward aspersion” and the room resounded with the laughter of her relatives as they set her right as to the use of “aspersion," as they understood the word. This the school girl also took with unusual Imperturbability, indeed, she said nothing until she finished, and then she added, meekly: “Will It do?” “Certainly not," replied the critics. “It is very, very bad. There is a perceptible straining after effect. It is not nearly so good as the clever little things you usually write about ‘Honor’ and 'lndustry.' You should keep to abstract subjects. Try to Improve on what you have written, however, and It may do.” "I don’t think I shall,” responded tlic school girl, with a wicked smile on her piquant little face, "because this was written by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s a chapter from one of his books, and I don’t believe I could improve on It—yet.” And then there was a silence in that library that could he heard on the street, for, after all, there didn’t seem to be anything left to say.