Howard Pyle, a chronicle by Charles D. Abbott, with an introduction by N. C. Wyeth and many illustrations from Howard Pyle's works.

IHOWARD PYLE: A CHRONICLE
"We had Mr. and Mrs. Charles Parsons staying with
us-how delightful it would have been had we but had you!
I don't know, however, whether you would be so fond of
roughing it.
"About my 'thoughts,' I don't know whether you quite
caught my idea in sending them to you. I have had them by
me for some time, working a little now and a little then
until, at last, I began to wonder whether, after all, I had
not undertaken a Sisyphus task of rolling a dead stone up
a hill-only to have it roll back again after I had got it
fairly to the top. Of course what I have already writtenthat which you read-is the dullest and dryest of all. It is
only digging the ground for the seed I would like to plant.
But do I dig my ground? Am I really rolling a stone away?
Do I prove my premises?
"I think more of your literary judgment than of any man
I know and that is why I sent you my preparatory lucubrations. Would you continue them if you were I?
"You say in your letter that you wish that the thoughts
could have been cast in a more dramatic form. That, I
apprehend, is impossible. That which 'is emotional never
convinces. The emotional argument, for instance, that the
good God who made all things well could not create man
to curse him with hopes that can never be fulfilled is fundamentally true, but it can never convince. First prove that
God is and is good and then the other rests sure-founded
upon it. So, I take it, the only sure method is first to convince and then to emotionalize..00
"Very sincerely your friend,
"HOWARD PYLE."
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