Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/63



had received her first commission! What artist does not remember the day when he sold his first picture? What sculptor but has made a broad red mark in his memory against the day his first model was accepted? What writer can recall without a smile of reflected pleasure the hour when the post brought him, not his own carefully written manuscript, "returned with regrets and thanks," but a letter telling him that his thoughts are to be scattered abroad to the world through the mighty medium of the printing-press? He may learn later that what he thought was living seed is nothing but chaff, thrown out from other brains, and mistaken by him for original inspiration; he may find that the seed, though living, falls upon stony ground, and perishes. But in that hour of maiden success there is no gnawing doubt of self; all is pure, triumphant happiness. Perhaps only second to one moment in all our lives is this first victory,—that moment when the one heart in all the world whose beating is attuned to our