J. M. Barrie

“ In those days Mary had the loveliest ideas for her sad little book, and they came to her mostly in the morning when she was only three-parts awake, but as she stepped out of bed they all flew away like startled birds. I gathered from David that this depressed her exceedingly.
Oh, Mary, your thoughts are much too pretty and holy to show themselves to anyone but yourself. The shy things are hiding within you. If they could come into the open they would not be a book, they would be little Barbara. ”

“ O, the happy boy!
But months afterward, rummaging at his home in a closet that is usually kept locked, he discovered the picture, there hidden away. His wife backed into a corner and made trembling confession. How could she submit to see her dear's masterpiece ignored by the idiot public, and her dear himself plunged into gloom thereby? She knew as well as he (for had they not been married for years?) how the artistic instinct hungers for recognition, and so with her savings she bought the great work anonymously and stored it away in a closet. ”

“ When I take a note in A, I drop its into the A box, and so on, much to the satisfaction of David, who likes to drop them in for me. I had now to admit that Wheeler & Gibb made the boxes.
"But I made the labels myself, David."
"They are not so well made as the boxes," he replied.
Thus I have reason to wish ill to Mary's work of imagination, as I presumed it to be, and I said to him with easy brutality, "Tell her about the boxes, David, and that no one can begin a book until they are all full. That will frighten her." ”