A reporter can describe a thing he has seen in such a way that he can make the reader see it, too.

A man of genius can describe something he has never seen, or any one else for that matter, in such a way that the reader will exclaim: 'I have never committed a murder; but if I had, that's just the way I'd feel about it.' For instance, Kipling tells us how a Greek pirate, chained to the oar of a trireme, suffers; how a mother rejoices when her baby crawls across her breast.

Kipling has never been a mother or a pirate, but he convinces you he knows how each of them feels.

He can do that because he is a genius; you cannot do it because you are not.

At college you wrote only of what you saw at college; and now that you are in the newspaper business all your tales are only of newspaper work.