The writings of Lafcadio Hearn Author:Lafcadio Hearn Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: old as the dance — as old as Phidias anyhow? ... I suppose this is absurd, but wish it was n't. TO H. E. KREHBIEL New Orleans, 1887 Dear Krehbiel, — Exc... more »uses for silence between us are, I fancy, recognized as unnecessary, since they always have a good cause. I read with admiration and pleasure the fine critiques you were kind enough to send me; and I verily believe that you will be recognized sooner or later, if you are not already, as the best musical critic in the United States. Of course, I'm talking now on a subject I know little about; yet, if there be any superior to you, I am sure it is only that, being much older than you, they may have had a generation longer of opportunities for study. My little book is advancing; and I am now face to face with what I recognize as one of the most awful situations in life, the criticism of the proofreader. I don't mean the commonplace proofreader, who is a mere printer; but the terrible scholar who supervises proofs for a leading class of publishers, such as the man of the University or Riverside Press, who knows all rules of grammar, all laws of form, all the weaknesses of writers — and whose frightful suggestions are often simply crushing! What you have spent a month in making a beauty-blossom of style, may suddenly fade into worthless dust at one touch of his terrific pencil,making the simple hook-mark " ?" I can imagine I hear a voice asking: " Do you desire to make a fool of yourself by having this line in print?" And then the after-thoughts, the premature hurrying away of proofs, the frantic rush to the telegraph-office to have them returned or corrected, the humble letters of apology for trouble given, the yells of anguish in bed at night when I think to myself, "Oh! what a d d ass I have been!" I have been now three ...« less