“Did you hear what Howells once said to a boring author who was trying to wring a compliment out of him? ‘I don’t know how it is,’ said the author, ‘I don’t seem to write as well as I used to do.’ ‘Oh, yes you do — indeed you do. You write as well as you ever did;– But your taste is improving.”

— From a letter from John Jay Chapman to Margaret Chanler, Nov. 30, 1911