Once on the edge of a woods at twilight I came upon a small peach tree in flower. I stayed there watching until the light was gone. I saw nothing of the tree’s origin, nothing of the might which had forced open a pit you could break your teeth on, and nothing of the principle which held it separate from the oaks and the grasses. All that appeared to me was a profound and eerie grace.(翻译3）So it is with the reader who comes upon an outstanding story: spellbound, he takes it to his heart, no question asked. But even the beginning writer knows there is more to a story’s life than the body of words which carries it into the world, and that it does not begin with writing, but with conception in the dark of the mind. It is not necessary to understand the creative function in order to produce original work. Centuries of art, philosophy and science have emerged from the minds of people who may not even have suspected the inner process. It seems to me, however, that at least a degree of understanding of the creative event increases our wisdom in dealing with the emerging story by making us aware of two things. First, genius is not the exclusive property of the master craftsman; it is the creative function of the human mind. There is no mastery without it, and there is no person without it, however undeveloped it may be. Mastery is genius afoot.It is genius cultivated, developed, and exercised. Your genius works at the level of origins; its business is to create; it is the creator of your story. Second, the body of words that carries your story into the world is the work of the craftsman’s labor, which is as conscious, as canny, and as practical as that of the bricklayer. While genius is a natural part of our mental equipment, like perception, memory, and imagination, craftsmanship is not. It must be learned. It is learned by practice, and by practice it is mastered. If the stories that rise within us are to emerge and flourish, each must be provided with a strong, handsome body of words, and only sound craftsmanship can provide this. Thus variously laden we move through life, and now and then an experience, often slight, prices,the memory and seizes upon one of those live, expectant impressions of long age, and a quickening takes place. This happens to everyone and more often than is known. But there are times when it happens to the creative writer and causes him to catch his breath because he knows that the seed of a story has quickened and has begun a life of its own. Like any seed, the seed of a story has its own principle of growth which employs a process of intelligent selection, drawing from the unconscious mind’s vast treasury of experience that it needs to fulfill its inherent form: there come together people and their ways, with weather and times and places,Thus “made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth,” the story expands and rises, unhurried, until at last it presents itself to the conscious mind. Here at the threshold, vibrant with expectation, it awaits its body of words. Genius, the creative function, has done its work. And only now does the craftsman, the deliverer, begin his. A story rarely, if ever, presents itself as a whole. Robert Frost said that he never knew where a poem was going when he began it. Until I am almost upon it in a first draft, I do not know a story’s end, or even its point; and there are times when only after two, three or more drafts will the story come clearly into focus.14.The author cites his experience of seeing a tree in flower on the edge of a woods to show that___________.