the Vandalia track that day as the engine bell in the judges' stand tolled out the warning signal and the old marshal on his white circus horse rode down the track sidewise, bellowing out the "mile foot-race fer the champeenship of the world!”1

Take a good look at this little picture. Is there an element in it that you could not have thought of by yourself? You do not believe that your own impressions were less vivid, for you felt the heat, the crowd, the dust, in just that way. From your point of view, that is what makes the whole so true. It corresponds perfectly to your experience. You did not phrase your impressions at the time, but is not the language simple enough—just the phrases, taken one by one, you might perfectly well have used? What is it, then, which is, perhaps, beyond your reach? It is to give a clear, multicolored impression of the whole appearance, taking into account all the facts you remember, the air, the crowd, the noise, the dust, the excitement, the look and sensation of it all, not vaguely, but specifically, by some sort of orderly selection of parts, by some sort of focussing process that suggests whatever it blots out, so that the whole, the reality, is always retained. This kind of record, as you say, requires more originality than you possess. But now please notice that it presents much the same problem as describing the significance of Queen Mary's death, after a reading of Froude's complexly detailed narrative. Doubtless it is only a man with a good deal of art who can accomplish either of these things well; but, on the whole, it is as difficult to do one as the other.

You may call this ability what you like-trained observation, craftsmanship, imagination; but for purposes of getting it into a real relationship with your own capabilities and with your character, it is well to call it thorough

1 Arthur Ruhl, “Left Behind,” Scribner's Magazine, vol. 38, p. 300.

ness. If you lack thoroughness, you may still hope to gain some of it and some of those qualities that it either includes or creates.

III. The Practical Methods
I

After considering even thus briefly what literary art is and what are some of its demands on us, we are in a better position to take advantage of any definite, practical advice as to methods of working at our literary tasks. But no practical advice such as, for example, Benjamin Franklin or Robert Louis Stevenson has given us about how to sit down to work, or such counsel in regard to technicalities of structure as the books of rhetoric are full of, is so important and so fundamental as a vivid conception of the kind of energy which the ideals of literary art represent.

By practical methods I mean here the combination of personal habits of work with external principles of literary structure. Good habits of work come from the effort to make them correspond to principles of structure. Unity is a principle of structure; concentration is a habit of work. Ease is a principle of structure; listening to the tone of what one says and imitating or continuing its finest strains is a habit of work. But concentration and listening to tone are effected by different people in different ways, and the habits resulting are individual. Therefore practical methods of composition are often highly idiosyncratic. Those which I shall ultimately emphasize have, however, a fairly wide utility.

Authors themselves, both the great and the less, have furnished us with an almost infinite variety of information as to how they "do it," ranging from the sort of pen

1

they use to the diet and even the brand of tobacco which most conduce to inspiration. I recall reading somewhere that the libretto of Don Giovanni was written at midnight in a haze of latakia, and that the novels of Marion Crawford were clearly indited on a certain definite size of paper with a Falcon pen. Doubtless there is something to be learned from a study of writers' proclivities: for when you discover that every hour of the day and night has been named by some successful author as the one and only season for labor; and that certain mysterious persons, like Lord Byron, wrote only at the remaining unknown seasons; also that every conceivable speed is earnestly to be striven for, from Walter Pater's two pages a day to Anthony Trollope's regular two hundred and fifty words every fifteen minutes by the clock, or Colonel Ingraham's forty thousand words in twenty-four hours, for some novel of the immortal Buffalo Bill Series; you wisely conclude that you should study your own case in these matters, and discover what seasons are for you the most fluent or the most intense, and how much work you can, as a rule, do effectively at a stretch. It is also interesting to know that such a veteran as Doctor Johnson, found it easier to write while he was stroking a cat; that Herbert Spencer, who suffered from a nervous affection and wrote in brief half-hour intervals, wore a white canton-flannel suit to maintain an equilibrium of heat throughout his body, and thick eartabs to keep out noise; that Zola worked in the daytime, with blinds closed and gas lighted; and that vast numbers of authors have written chiefly before breakfastas their writings most obviously show. Somebody has defined literature as the record of the best moments of the best minds. A psychologist (with a sense of humor), investigating this matter of authors' habits, could determine

for us what are the best moments and under what circumstances they are most likely to occur. But until that is done we shall have to blunder on in our own ways.

There are, nevertheless, a number of small matters of sufficiently general application to be mentioned here. It is most important to learn to write a fastidiously clear script in lines far enough apart to allow an inserted line in revision, to get used to a standard size page, regular margins, and, in general, to perfect early such mechanical aspects of the task as every man finds serviceable. It is an excellent practise, in most cases, to revise each paragraph as it is finished, and the whole composition afterward, and to make a great moral effort to complete the first draft in these two natural processes of revision-after which there should be made a final draft, allowing a certain time, if possible, to intervene.1

A very reasonable proclivity of a well-known American novelist is to write the first draft of his stories in college blue books, using the opposite blank page for his revisions and insertions. I know of no purely mechanical suggestion so apt to increase order and unity, and to save time, as this. Another writer has told me that he finds it fatal to the ultimately desired sequence of his work to write on large sheets of paper. He writes passages on half-sheets, and from time to time rearranges them and pastes them together. In this way he can see more exactly the real sequences and connections, and he is not so apt to invent a transition or a casual relationship between two thoughts which have occurred to him in succession, but which have no other natural connection. He often finds, that is, that

1 The student who finishes an essay or report at midnight and turns it in to his instructor the next morning is usually forcing the instructor to do fifty per cent of the revising which the student, a day later, could have done equally well for himself.

the lucidus ordo of his production is not the chronological order of his thoughts, however logical that order may have seemed at the time.

Now the lucid order, the right arrangement of parts, is obviously the chief end of structure, and these personal, practical devices or habits are developed by the demands of that end.

The fundamental methods are organizing detail and guiding the reader, and keeping or modulating the tone. They are all methods which serve the end of clearness, though that word, as we shall see, can be variously interpreted. But among all methods that might be suggested, if the student who is learning to write understands thoroughly one or two, he has, so to speak, introduced a yeast into his ideas and purposes which will leaven the whole. Let us consider first an illustrative method of organizing detail.

II

Let us suppose that in thinking over the fate of Mary Queen of Scots, to take a subject already referred to and somewhat familiar, you have been struck with the idea that Mary's world of royalty and statecraft was so small and so closely organized that everything any one did in it seemed to affect sooner or later everybody else who belonged to it. In this closely organized world everything counted in a peculiar way. Mary herself was too important to take a single step which, if it happened to be a foolish one, did not rapidly bring her into trouble. In the larger, more loosely organized world of commonalty, our mistakes are oftener to be mended, because our influence does not radiate so rapidly or so widely. But in Mary's world, the King of Spain could have no opinion that did not ultimately