CHAPTER VI. -Crome yellow

Mr. Barbecue-Smith, an older, successful writer known for his spiritual books, arrives at Crome for a visit and quickly becomes the center of attention with his talks on inspiration and writing. At tea, he dismisses Denis Stone, a young aspiring writer, with Olympian condescension, which ignites a blend of fury and embarrassment in Denis. Later, Mr. Barbecue-Smith shares with Denis his secret to prolific writing—inspiration drawn from the subconscious, claiming a direct connection to the Infinite that allows him to write thousands of words with minimal effort. This method, according to him, transformed his career from struggling journalist to celebrated author. He encourages Denis to harness this power by focusing his mind before entering a trance-like state, where inspiration flows and does the work for him. Throughout their conversation, Mr. Barbecue-Smith reads out some of his aphorisms which, he suggests, are born of this process of channeling universal truths. He asserts that such an approach not only simplifies the writing process but elevates the content to a level of spiritual or universal significance, albeit with Denis showing skepticism towards the easiness and mystic reliability of such a method.