Read "The Making of a Novelist" by David Christie Murray online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It was at least as agreeable to starve on the non-proceeds of landscape painting as on those of journalism, and when nothing in the way of meat and drink was to be got out of either, it was only a choice as to the form of euthanasia. I guessed I could make no money out of painting; but I knew by practical experience that there was nothing to be made by journalism.
I was daubing in a friend's chambers when the angel of opportunity came. He appeared in the form of an American gentleman with a fur collar and an astonishing Massachusetts accent. War had been actually declared between Russia and Turkey a week or two before. The Russians were already at Giurgevo, building a bridge of boats with intent to cross the Danube, and the Turks were gathered in force at Rustchuk and Schumla. So much I knew from I the newspapers, but no further intelligence of the opening campaign had reached me.