Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/65

Rh generation, is another—or else the genius that produced Tom Sawyer and Innocents Abroad would never have allowed such sorry stuff as Adam's Diary to don the dignity of print. Other writers, even some of the greatest, can get the proper outside perspective of their work only by some systematic method, some mechanical device. Balzac, for instance, needed the impersonality of the printed page before he could judge the value of his writings or do any effective revision; it was only through