November 24, 1876

"I wonder how long it will be that I shall have to crawl in writing before I can begin to walk? At times I feel discouraged and then again the feeling rises strong within me that there is something in me that will produce, perhaps, worthy fruit in time. At present I am trammelled more than I can describe with stiffness in manner, crudeness in style, and self-consciousness (I do not know how else to describe it) in thought. The feet of my ideas seem clogged with the difficulties of expression; I can't open the flood gates of my mind and pour out my thoughts onto the paper. The sentences will not 'round up' so as to contain the thought in the shell of a few distinctly expressed words. I have to strike again and again with simile and hyperbole before I can crack that invisible, intangible wall that separates my internal thought from the perception of others."

Howard Pyle to his mother, November 24, 1876