Explore "The Unruly Sprite (Half-Told Tales)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There was once a man who was also a writer of books.
The merit of his books lies beyond the horizon of this tale. No doubt / some of them were good, and some of them were bad, and some were / merely popular. But he was all the time trying to make them better, / for he was quite an honest man, and thankful that the world should / give him a living for his writing. Moreover, he found great delight in / the doing of it, which was something that did not enter into the / world's account -- a kind of daily Christmas present in addition to his / wages.