I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again. p.5
I received Selby's letter today. Please tell me what is under this Sears Roebuck Straight Shooter approach. ...The criticism is vague and really tells me nothing except that they don't like it. I feel the objections they raise are connected with its virtues, and the thought of working with them specifically to correct these lacks they mention is repulsive to me. The letter is addressed to a slightly dim-witted Camp Fire Girl, and I cannot look with composure on getting a lifetime of others like them. I have not yet answered it and won't until I hear further from you, but if I were certain that Harcourt would take the novel, I would write Selby immediately that I prefer to be elsewhere. p.9
I won't see you again as I have to go to the hospital Friday and have a kidney hung on a rib. I will be there a month and at home a month. This was none of my plan... Please write me a card while I am in the hospital, I won't be able to do anything there but dislike the nurses. p.20
I wrote Dilly (Mrs. John Thompson) to find out where you and Ann were this year and she said at Iowa. I congratulate you on your endurance. ...The brothers Rinehart and I have parted company to our mutual satisfaction, and I have a contract with Harcourt, Brace, but I am largely worried about wingless chickens. I feel this is the time for me to fulfill myself by stepping in and saving the chicken, but I don't know exactly how since I am not bold. I only know I believe in the complete chicken. You think about the complete chicken for a while. The best to you and Anne. p.21
I got your letter a long time ago while I was at Emory Hospital. I stayed there a month, giving generous samples of my blood to this, that, and the other technician, all hours of the day and night, but now I am at home again and not receiving any more awful cards that say, "To a dear sick friend," in verse what's worse. Now I shoot myself with ACTH once daily, and look very well, and do nothing that I can get out of doing. I trust you are as well. p. 24
I hope this one will be a girl and have a fierce Old Testament name and cut off a lot of heads. You had better stay down and take care of yourself. Your children sound big enough to do all the work. By beating them moderately and moderately often you should be able to get them in the habit of doing domestic chores. p.26
Enclosed is Opus Nauseous No. 1. I had to read it over after it came from the typists's, and that was like spending the day eating a horse blanket. It seems mighty sorry to me but better than it was before. My mother said she wanted to read it again, so she went off with it and I found her a half hour later on page 9 and sound asleep. p. 27
I spent the summer in and out of Emory Hospital, but am hoping I can avoid it for the winter. I have got my last draft off to the publisher, and now am raising ducks like a respectable citizen. I have twenty-one. However, if the Lord is willing, I am shortly going to eat all twenty-one of them and start another novel. p. 29
I had to go have my picture taken for the purposes of Harcourt, Brace. They were all bad. (The pictures.) The one I sent looked as if I had just bitten my grandmother and that this was one of my few pleasures, but all the rest were worse. p. 31
I have a disease called lupus and I take a medicine called ACTH and I manage well enough to live with both. Lupus is one of those things in the rheumatic department; it comes and goes, when it comes I retire and when it goes, I venture forth. My father had it some twelve or fifteen years ago, but at that time there was nothing for it but the undertaker; now it can be controlled with the ACTH. I have enough energy to write with and, as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing. What you have to measure out, you come to observe closer, or so I tell myself. Last summer I went to Connecticut to visit the Fitzgeralds and smuggled three live ducks over Eastern Airlines for their children, but I have been inactive criminally since then. My mother and I live on a large place and I have bought me some peafowl and sit on the back steps a good deal studying them. I am going to be the world authority on peafowl, and I hope to be offered a chair someday at the Chicken College. p.57
My mother wants to send you a fruit cake; however it actually takes her about two months to bring one into being. It's like building a nest. First she thinks about it, then she begins to gather the material, then she begins to put it together. Right now she has hinted that I may pick out the nuts. I ain't sure my health permits this. Anyway, sometime or other it will arrive. p. 64
We are distressed that that cake hasn't arrived as we sent it before Thanksgiving, complete with all of the government stickers and stamps and other paraphernalia. Doubtless some official along the way ate it. I was going to ask you how you fared for peanut butter, and if you needed it was going to send you some, but I won't if things don't get there any better than that. I hate to think of your suffering for want of peanut butter though, and I doubt if they have advanced to the state of culture where they have it over there. If you ever do get the cake it should be good and stale. p.65
I certainly am glad you like the stories because now I feel it's not bad that I like them so much. The truth is I like them better than anybody, and I read them over and over and laugh and laugh, then get embarrassed when I remember I was the one wrote them. Unlike Wise Blood, they were all relatively painless to me, but now I have to quit enjoying life and get on with the second novel. p.80
I am going to New York on the 30th to be interviewed by Mr. Harvey Breit on a program he is starting up over NBC-TV. ...Do you think this is going to corrupt me? ... I will probably not be able to think of anything to say to Mr. Harvey but "Huh?" and "Ah dunno." When I come back I'll probably have to spend 3 months day and night in the chicken pen to counteract these evil influences.
...I am so glad to know I have a reader of quality because I have so many who aren't. I get some letters from people I might have created myself. ...I wish somebody real intelligent would write me sometime, but I seem to attract the lunatic fringe mainly. I will be real glad when this television thing is over with. I keep having a mental picture of my glacial glare being sent out over the nation onto millions of children who are waiting impatiently for The Batman to come on.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
J. Hudson Taylor
I besought Him to give me some work to do for Him, as an outlet for love and gratitude, some self-denying service, no matter what it might be, however trying or however trivial; something with which He would be pleased, and that I might do for Him who had done so much for me. Well do I remember, as in unreserved consecration I put myself, my life, my friends, my all, upon the altar, the deep solemnity that came over my soul with the assurance that my offering was accepted. The presence of God because unutterably real and blessed; and though but a child under sixteen, I remember stretching myself on the ground, and lying there silent before Him with unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy.
For what service I was accepted, I knew not; but a deep consciousness that I was no longer my own took possession of me, which has never since been effaced.
I told him that God had called my to spend my life in missionary service in that land. "And how do you propose to go there?" he inquired. I answered that i did not at all know; that it seemed to me probable that i should need to do as the Twelve and the Seventy had done in Judea - go without purse or scrip, relying on Him who had called me to supply all my need. Kindly placing his hand upon my shoulder, the minister replied, "Ah, my boy, as you grow older you will get wiser than that. Such an idea would do very well in the days when Christ Himself was on earth, but not now."
I have grown older since then, but now wiser. I am more than ever convinced that if we were to take the directions of our Master and the assurances He gave to His first disciples more fully as our guide, we should find them to be just as suited to our times as to those in which they were originally given. (p.16)
Adapted from pages 21-27:
My experience was that the less I spent on myself and the more I gave away, the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become. Unspeakable joy all the day long, and every day, was my happy experience. God, even my God, was a living, bright reality; and all I had to do was joyful service. ...At such times it almost seemed to me as if Heaven were begun below, and that all that could be looked for was an enlargement of one's capacity for joy, not a truer filling than I possessed.
One night a poor man asked me to go and pray with his wife, saying that she was dying. Up a miserable flight of stairs, into a wretched room, he led me; and oh, what a sight there presented itself to our eyes! Four or five poor children stood about, their sunken cheeks and temples all telling unmistakably the story of slow starvation.
Immediately it occurred to me that all the money I had in the world was in one coin. I was not yet prepared to trust Him only, without any money at all in my pocket. Somehow or other there was at once a stoppage in the flow of joy in my heart. It will scarcely seems strange that I was unable to say much to comfort these people. I needed comfort myself. I began to tell them, however, that they must not be cast down, that though their circumstances were very distressing, there was a kind and loving Father in Heaven; but something within me said, "You hypocrite, telling these unconverted people about a kind and loving Father in Heaven, and not prepared yourself to trust him without half a crown!" I was nearly choked.
To talk was impossible under these circumstances; yet, strange to say, I thought I should have no difficulty in praying. Prayer was a delightful occupation to me in those days; time thus spent never seemed wearisome, and I knew nothing of lack of words. I seemed to think that all I should have to do would be to kneel down and engage in prayer, and that relief would come to them and to myself together. But scarcely had I opened my lips with "Our Father who art in heaven" than conscience said within, "Dare you mock God? Dare you kneel down and call him Father with that half crown in your pocket?" Such a time of conflict came upon me then as I have never experienced before or since.
Just then the word flashed into my mind, "Give to him that asketh of thee." And in the word of a King there is great power! I put my hand in my pocket, and slowly drawing forth the half crown, gave it to the man, telling him that it might seem a small matter to him, but that in parting with that coin I was giving him all I had to live on, and that what I had been trying to tell him was indeed true - God really was a Father, and might be trusted.
The joy all came back in full flood tide to my heart; and the hindrance to blessing was gone. Not only was the poor woman's life saved, but I realized that my life was saved too! It might have been a wreck - would have been a wreck probably - had not grace at that time conquered, and the striving of God's Spirit been obeyed. I well remember how that night, as I went home to my lodgings, my heart was as light as my pocket. When I took my basin of gruel before retiring that night, I would not have exchanged it for a prince's feast.
The next morning a postman's knock was heard on the door. I was not in the habit of receiving letters on Monday, as my parents and most of my friends refrained from posting on Saturday; so that I was somewhat surprised when the landlady came in holding a packet in her wet hand. It was either a strange hand or a feigned one, and the postmark was blurred. Where it came from I could not tell. On opening the envelope I found nothing written within, but inside was a folded pair of kid gloves, from which, as I opened them in astonishment, half a sovereign fell to the ground.
I cannot tell you how often my mind has returned to this incident, or all the help it has been to me in circumstances of later difficulty. If we are faithful to God in little things, we shall gain experience and strength that will be helpful to us in the more serious trials of life."
For what service I was accepted, I knew not; but a deep consciousness that I was no longer my own took possession of me, which has never since been effaced.
I told him that God had called my to spend my life in missionary service in that land. "And how do you propose to go there?" he inquired. I answered that i did not at all know; that it seemed to me probable that i should need to do as the Twelve and the Seventy had done in Judea - go without purse or scrip, relying on Him who had called me to supply all my need. Kindly placing his hand upon my shoulder, the minister replied, "Ah, my boy, as you grow older you will get wiser than that. Such an idea would do very well in the days when Christ Himself was on earth, but not now."
I have grown older since then, but now wiser. I am more than ever convinced that if we were to take the directions of our Master and the assurances He gave to His first disciples more fully as our guide, we should find them to be just as suited to our times as to those in which they were originally given. (p.16)
Adapted from pages 21-27:
My experience was that the less I spent on myself and the more I gave away, the fuller of happiness and blessing did my soul become. Unspeakable joy all the day long, and every day, was my happy experience. God, even my God, was a living, bright reality; and all I had to do was joyful service. ...At such times it almost seemed to me as if Heaven were begun below, and that all that could be looked for was an enlargement of one's capacity for joy, not a truer filling than I possessed.
One night a poor man asked me to go and pray with his wife, saying that she was dying. Up a miserable flight of stairs, into a wretched room, he led me; and oh, what a sight there presented itself to our eyes! Four or five poor children stood about, their sunken cheeks and temples all telling unmistakably the story of slow starvation.
Immediately it occurred to me that all the money I had in the world was in one coin. I was not yet prepared to trust Him only, without any money at all in my pocket. Somehow or other there was at once a stoppage in the flow of joy in my heart. It will scarcely seems strange that I was unable to say much to comfort these people. I needed comfort myself. I began to tell them, however, that they must not be cast down, that though their circumstances were very distressing, there was a kind and loving Father in Heaven; but something within me said, "You hypocrite, telling these unconverted people about a kind and loving Father in Heaven, and not prepared yourself to trust him without half a crown!" I was nearly choked.
To talk was impossible under these circumstances; yet, strange to say, I thought I should have no difficulty in praying. Prayer was a delightful occupation to me in those days; time thus spent never seemed wearisome, and I knew nothing of lack of words. I seemed to think that all I should have to do would be to kneel down and engage in prayer, and that relief would come to them and to myself together. But scarcely had I opened my lips with "Our Father who art in heaven" than conscience said within, "Dare you mock God? Dare you kneel down and call him Father with that half crown in your pocket?" Such a time of conflict came upon me then as I have never experienced before or since.
Just then the word flashed into my mind, "Give to him that asketh of thee." And in the word of a King there is great power! I put my hand in my pocket, and slowly drawing forth the half crown, gave it to the man, telling him that it might seem a small matter to him, but that in parting with that coin I was giving him all I had to live on, and that what I had been trying to tell him was indeed true - God really was a Father, and might be trusted.
The joy all came back in full flood tide to my heart; and the hindrance to blessing was gone. Not only was the poor woman's life saved, but I realized that my life was saved too! It might have been a wreck - would have been a wreck probably - had not grace at that time conquered, and the striving of God's Spirit been obeyed. I well remember how that night, as I went home to my lodgings, my heart was as light as my pocket. When I took my basin of gruel before retiring that night, I would not have exchanged it for a prince's feast.
The next morning a postman's knock was heard on the door. I was not in the habit of receiving letters on Monday, as my parents and most of my friends refrained from posting on Saturday; so that I was somewhat surprised when the landlady came in holding a packet in her wet hand. It was either a strange hand or a feigned one, and the postmark was blurred. Where it came from I could not tell. On opening the envelope I found nothing written within, but inside was a folded pair of kid gloves, from which, as I opened them in astonishment, half a sovereign fell to the ground.
I cannot tell you how often my mind has returned to this incident, or all the help it has been to me in circumstances of later difficulty. If we are faithful to God in little things, we shall gain experience and strength that will be helpful to us in the more serious trials of life."
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