Somewhat in this way, as I paused upon my map of 'Treasure
Island,' the future character of the book began to appear
there visibly among imaginary woods; and their brown faces
and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected
quarters, as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting
treasure, on these few square inches of a flat projection.
The next thing I knew I had some papers before me and was
writing out a list of chapters. How often have I done so,
and the thing gone no further! But there seemed elements of
success about this enterprise. It was to be a story for
boys; no need of psychology or fine writing; and I had a boy
at hand to be a touchstone. Women were excluded. I was
unable to handle a brig (which the HISPANIOLA should have
been), but I thought I could make shift to sail her as a
schooner without public shame. And then I had an idea for
John Silver from which I promised myself funds of
entertainment; to take an admired friend of mine (whom the
reader very likely knows and admires as much as I do), to
deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of
temperament, to leave him with nothing but his strength, his
courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality, and to
try to express these in terms of the culture of a raw
tarpaulin. Such psychical surgery is, I think, a common way
of 'making character'; perhaps it is, indeed, the only way.
We can put in the quaint figure that spoke a hundred words
with us yesterday by the wayside; but do we know him? Our
friend, with his infinite variety and flexibility, we know -
but can we put him in? Upon the first, we must engraft
secondary and imaginary qualities, possibly all wrong; from
the second, knife in hand, we must cut away and deduct the
needless arborescence of his nature, but the trunk and the
few branches that remain we may at least be fairly sure of.
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