If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there. - Mark Twain

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

Surely the test of a novel's characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs—the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest—you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.

To place man properly at the present time, he stands somewhere between the angels and the French.