Perhaps you think you know everything that is to be known about people around you. But do you, I wonder? Do they know everything about you—your ideals and inner struggles, and aims and aspirations?

I doubt it.

Experience shows that very often the people we know least of all are those with whom we come into daily contact. We take them for granted. We do not even trouble to try to understand them. That they should have doubts and difficulties, heart-aches and hopes and high aspirations, even as we have, sometimes comes as a surprise to us.

Begin your observations just where you are now. See if you can find the glint of gold that is always somewhere below the surface in every human being, if we can but strike the right place. Try to sort out the reasons and the motives that are thick in the air around you. See if you can discern another side to a person's character than the one you have always accepted as a matter of course.

And write down your discoveries and your observations. You will need them later on.

Here, then, is the first step in training yourself for authorship. It is only one step, I admit; but you will find it can be made to cover a good deal of ground.

PART THREE

Steady, quiet, consecutive reading is necessary if we are to do steady quiet, consecutive thinking; and, without such thinking, it is impossible for writers to produce anything worth while.

The Bane of "Browsing"

It is so difficult for the uninitiated to understand that the business of writing and making books is one that entails as much close, monotonous work as any other business; and the mere fact that any one spends a certain amount of time in reading a bit here and a bit there, picking up a book for a half-hour's entertainment and throwing it down the minute it ceases to stimulate the curiosity, is no more preparation for literary work than an occasional tinkling at a piano, trying a few bars here and there of chance compositions, would be any preparation for giving a pianoforte recital or composing a sonata.

I have nothing to say against dipping into books as a recreation—refreshing one's memory among old friends, or looking for happy discoveries in new-comers—I have passed hosts of pleasant half-hours in this way myself when my brain was too tired to work, and I wanted relaxation. But such reading is not work; neither is it training in any sort of sense—it is merely a pastime; and, as such, must only be taken in moderation. It should be the exception, not a habit.

If you allow yourself to get into this way of haphazard reading, in time you lose the ability to do any consecutive reading, and, as a natural consequence, it would be utterly impossible for you to do any consecutive thinking,—an essential for connected writing.

The reason for this is quite clear, if you think it over. When you persistently skim a legion of books, or dip into them casually, and live mentally on a diet of snippets—a form of reading that has been the vogue of late years—you are giving yourself mental indigestion that is wonderfully akin to the indigestion that would follow a food diet on similar lines. If your meals always consisted of snacks taken at all sorts of odd times—fried fish followed by rich chocolates, with a nibble at a mince tart, a few spoonfuls of preserved ginger, a trifle of roast duck, some macaroni cheese, a little salmon and cucumber, some grouse, oyster patties, and ice-cream on top of that—your stomach wouldn't know what to do with it all, and—— I need say no more about it!

In the same way, when you read first one thing and then another, piling poems on love scenes, then adding a motley, disconnected selection of scraps of information (of doubtful use in most cases) with sensational episodes and pessimistic outpourings, irrespective of any sort of sequence or logical connection, your mind doesn't know what to do with the conglomeration; for no sooner has your thinking machine set one series of thoughts in motion, than it has to switch off that current and start on something else. Eventually the brain gives up the struggle; the thoughts cease to work; you lose the power to remember—much less to assimilate—what you read.

In the end, you can't read! Nature is bound to take this course in sheer self-defence; the only alternative would be lunacy!

You can see all this exemplified, pitifully, in the present day. With the great rush of cheap books (and still cheaper education) that flooded the country at the beginning of this century, the masses simply gorged themselves with indiscriminate reading-matter—of a sort, (and so did many who ought to have known better). Gradually they lost the taste for straight-forward simple stories of human life as it really is; things had to be blood-curdling and highly sensational. The type of reading-matter that had formerly been associated solely with the "dime novel" and depraved youths of the criminal class, found its way into all sorts and conditions of bindings, and all sorts and conditions of homes. People's minds were getting so blunted that they simply could not follow anything unless it was punctuated with lurid lights; they could not grasp anything unless it was crude and bizarre and monstrous; they could not hear anything of the Still Small Voice that is the essence of all beauty in literature, art or nature. Everything had to be in shouts and shrieks to arrest their attention.

Finally, the masses lost the power to read at all, and we are now living in an age when everything must be presented in the most obvious medium—pictures. Few people can concentrate on reading even the day's news—it has to be given in pictures. The picture-palace and the music-hall revue (which is another form of spectacular entertainment) stand for the mental stimulus that is the utmost a large bulk of the population are equal to to-day.

We delude ourselves by saying that we live in such a busy age, we have not time to read. But it is not our lack of time so much as our lack of brain power that is the trouble; and that brain power has been dissipated, primarily, by over-indulgence in desultory reading that was valueless.

All this is to explain why a course of indiscriminate "browsing" is no recommendation for the one who wishes to take up literary work. Steady, quiet, consecutive reading is necessary if we are to do steady, quiet, consecutive thinking; and, without such thinking, it is impossible to write anything worth whiles.

Let your reading extend over a wide range, certainly—the wider the better, so long as you can cover the ground thoroughly—for an author should be well-read. But take care that you do read; don't mistake "nibbling" for reading. Far better know but one poem of Browning thoroughly and understandingly, than have on your shelves a complete set of his works into which you dip at random, when the mood seizes you, with no clear idea as to what any of it is about.

Reading for Definite Data

All stories dealing with a bygone period require much preliminary reading, in order that one may become imbued with the spirit of that particular age, as well as familiarised with its manners and customs and mode of speech.

Most amateurs seem to think that a plentiful sprinkling of expletives about the pages, with the introduction of a few historic names and events, are sufficient to produce the required old-world atmosphere. I could not possibly count the number of MSS. I have read where the rival suitor for the hand of "Mistress Joan" says "Gadsook" in every other sentence, while the estimable young man who, like her father, is loyal to the king, is hidden away in the secret-panel room.

But tricks such as these do not give the story an authentic atmosphere. You can only get this by systematic study of the literature relating to the period.

And others, besides novelists, find it advantageous to study historical records. I remember when Mr. William Canton (the author of those charming studies of child life, W. V., Her Book, and The Invisible Playmate) was engaged on the big history of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and was writing the account of the Society's Bible work in Italy, not only did he read all their official reports, and the correspondence bearing on the subject, but, in order to get the work in its right perspective as regards the events of the times, he re-read Italian history for the period he was dealing with. Thus he enabled himself to gauge much more comprehensively the significance of the Bible Society's work in that country when viewed in relation to national happenings, public thought, and the attitude of mind of the Italian people.

The writer of articles or books on general subjects (as distinct from fiction) must obviously do a good deal of research. And such reading for definite information has one value that is not always recognised by the amateur—it may let him know whether it is worth while to write the article at all!

Suppose, for example, that you have decided to write an article on "The Evolution of the Chimney-Pot." It is a foregone conclusion that you think you have a certain amount of exclusive information in your own head about chimney-pots, else there would be no call for you to write on this subject, since the public does not want articles containing nothing more than what has been published already.

You have collected some facts and information about chimney-pots, however, that you think are interesting and quite new. So far, good. Nevertheless, you will be wise to ascertain what has already been written on the subject; it may throw fresh light on your own gleanings.

First, you will probably look up the subject in a good encyclopædia—failing one of your own, consult one at a public library. If there is anything at all under this heading, it is just possible there may be cross-references that will be useful, and allusions to other works on the subject, which it would be well for you to get hold of if you can. Then you will also remember that Ruskin has written "A Chapter on Chimneys" in his Poetry of Architecture, with some delightful illustrations. And in the course of your explorations, some one may be able to direct you to other works on the subject, one book so often leads on to another. In this way you find you are absorbing quite a large amount of interesting information.

Yet presently you may make the very important discovery that what you were intending to say has already been said by others, and possibly said in a better and more authoritative manner than you could pretend to at present!

On the other hand, you may still consider that you have exclusive information; in that case do your best with it, and you will find your reading has given you a quickened interest and wider grasp of your subject. But if, in absolute honesty to yourself, you know you have nothing new to contribute to the information that has already been published, then do not attempt to offer your article for publication. Write it up, by all means, as a journalistic exercise for your own improvement; it will be helpful if you try how far you can seize, and sum up concisely, the important points that you came across in your various readings on the subject. But don't attempt to pass off writing of this description as original matter. Such methods never get you far.

Even though the Editor may not have studied chimney-pots in detail, and does not recognise that your "copy" is practically a réchauffé of other people's writings, some of the readers will know that it contains nothing original, and will lose no time in telling him so. There is one cheery thing about the public, no matter how busy it may be with its own personal affairs, and preoccupied with a war, or labour troubles, a Presidential election, or little trifles like that, it most faithfully keeps an Editor informed if anything printed in his pages does not meet with its entire approval!

And when an Editor finds he has been taken in with stale material, he naturally marks that contributor for future remembrance.

It is well to bear in mind that one of the most valuable assets in a writer's outfit is a reputation for absolute reliability. Smart practice, trickery, clever dodges, may get a hearing once, even twice—but they have no future whatever.

Let it become a recognised thing that whatever you offer for publication is new matter resulting from your own personal knowledge and investigation, and matter that is sure to interest a section of the general public; that you have verified every detail, and have ascertained, to the best of your ability, that the subject has not been dealt with in this particular way before;—then you are sure of a place somewhere in a mild atmosphere, if not actually in the sun!

Also, common sense should tell you that you are checking the development of your own ability, when you let yourself down (no less than the publisher) by trying to pass off other people's brain-work as your own. It doesn't pay either way.

Reading for Style

You may not be able to detect any corresponding weaknesses in your own writings; but, if you have had no special training in literary work, I can safely assure you they are there—some of them, possibly all of them! In any case, no particular harm will result if you assume that your writing will stand a little improvement under each of these headings, and start to work accordingly.

In the first chapter I mentioned a lack of modernity in style as a frequent defect in the MSS. declined by publishers; unless you handled stories and articles all day long as an editor does you would never credit how widespread is the failing.

It is a curious fact that only a very small proportion of people can write as they actually speak; those who do so usually belong to the poorest of the uneducated classes, or they are experienced literary craftsmen.

The large majority of people are so self-conscious when they take pen in hand to write a story or an article, that they cannot be natural. They do not realise that they should write as ordinary human beings; they invariably feel they should write as famous authors; and they promptly drop the language they use as ordinary human beings in every-day life, and adopt an artificial, stilted style which they seem to think the correct thing for an author.

And this artificial phraseology is invariably archaic or Early Victorian, because the books people see labelled "good literature" or "the classics" are chiefly by dead-and-gone writers, who wrote in a style that sometimes sounds old-fashioned in these days, even though their English was excellent.

Our mode of speech and of writing in this twentieth century is not precisely that of Shakespeare or Milton, even though the fundamentals are the same. We live in a nervous, hurrying age, and our language is more nervous, more terse than it was even twenty years ago. We "speed up" our sentences, just as we "speed up" our stories and our articles. We have not time for lengthy introductions that arrive nowhere, and for ornate perorations that are superfluous. "Labour-saving" and "conservation of energy" are prominent watchwords of this present age, and are being applied to our language no less than to our work.

In order to get through all we must get through in a day (or, at any rate, all that we imagine we must get through!) it has become an unwritten law that the same thing must not be done twice over; more than this, we try to find the shortest cut to everywhere. As one result, we do not use two words where one will suffice; only the undisciplined, untrained mind employs a string of adjectives where one will convey the same idea, or repeats practically the same thing several times in succession.

Of course, all this curtailment can be—and often is—carried to excess, till only a few essential words are left in a sentence, and these are clipped of half their syllables; we find much of this in the newspapers and the periodicals of an inferior class. And it could be pushed so far, till at length we got to communicate with one another by nothing more than a series of grunts and snaps and snarls!

But I am not dealing with the forms of speech used by the illiterate or the half-educated; I am referring to the language used by the most intelligent of the educated classes, and I want the amateur to remember that this is not necessarily the language of Shakespeare, even though the same words be employed. There is a subtle difference in the placement of words, in the turn of phrases, in the strength and even the meaning of words, in the shaping of sentences, and that difference is what, for want of a better word, I term "modernity," and it is a quality that the amateur requires to cultivate.

This lack of modernity is noticeable in amateurs of all types. It is a marked feature in the writings of teachers and those who have had a university education, or purely academic training; and equally it is conspicuous in the MSS. of the one who leads a very quiet, retired existence, or has a restricted view of life.

At first sight it may seem strange to the 'varsity girl, who considers herself the last word in modernity, that I classify her early literary attempts with those of a middle-aged invalid, let us say, who knows very little of the world at large.

But those who concentrate exclusively on one idea, or have their outlook narrowed to one particular groove—whether that groove be church-work, or housekeeping, or hockey, or reading for a degree—drop into an antiquated mode of expression, as a rule, the moment they start to write anything apart from a letter to an intimate. The rôle of author looms large before them. The mind instantly suggests the style of those authors they have been in the habit of reading—and more particularly those they would like other people to think they were in the habit of reading—the books that are accepted classics, and, consequently, must be beyond all question.

It matters not whether amateurs are shaping themselves according to Cowper and Miss Edgeworth, or striving to live up to the Elizabethan giants, they arrive at an old-fashioned style for which there is no more call in the world of to-day than there is for a crinoline or a Roman toga. And this, despite the greatness of their models.

Here are a few sentences taken at random from the pile of MSS. waiting attention here in my office:—

"Let us ponder awhile at the shrine of Nature." This is from an article on "A Country Walk," written by a High School teacher. Now, would she have said that, personally, either to a friend or to a class, if they were going out for a country walk? Of course not! You see at once how antiquated and stilted it is when you subject it to the test of natural, present-day requirements.

In another MS. I read, "King Sol was seeking his couch in the west." Why not have said, "The sun was setting"?

"He was her senior by some two summers," writes a would-be novelist, in describing hero and heroine. Why "some" two summers, I wonder? And would it not be more straightforward to say, "He was two years older than she"?

"They were of respectable parentage, though poor and hard-working withal." Needless to say this occurs in a story of rustic life. Why is it that the amateur so often describes the cottager in this "poor but pious" strain?

"We saw ahead of us her home—to wit, a rose-grown, yellow-washed cottage." And a very pretty home it was, no doubt; but why spoil it by the introduction of "to wit"?

"He was indeed a meet lover for such an up-to-date girl." The word "meet" is not merely antiquated and unsuited to a story of present-day life; it seems particularly out of place when used in close connection with so modern a term as "up-to-date." The two expressions are centuries apart, and both should not have been included in the same sentence.

One MS. says, "I would fain tell you of the devious ways in which the poor girl strove to earn an honest livelihood and keep penury at bay; but, alas! dear reader, space does not avail." On the whole, one is thankful that it didn't avail, all things considered!

In a letter accompanying another MS. the author explains, "You won't find any slang in my writing. I revel in the rich sonority of the English language." That is all right; but some people confuse "rich sonority" with artificiality. A word may be richness itself if rightly applied, but if used in a wrong connection, or employed in an affected or unnatural manner, it will lose all its richness and become merely old-fashioned, or else absurd.

I have not the space to spare for further instances, but I notice one phrase that is curiously popular with the beginner, who frequently lets you know the name of some character in these words, "Mary Jones, for such was her name——" etc. I cannot understand what is the charm of that expression, "for such was her name"; but it is one of the amateurs' many stand-bys.

Common sense will tell you that the surest way to gain a good modern style is to read good modern stuff.

Begin with a special study of the Editorials in the best type of newspapers. This is reading that I strongly advocate for the amateur in order to counteract archaic tendencies; though I wish emphatically to point out that by the "Leading Articles" I do not mean the average "Woman's Gossip," or whatever other name is given to the column of inanities that is devoted to feminine topics; for in some newspapers this is about as futile and feeble, and as badly written as it is possible for a newspaper column to be.

Unfortunately, the average person does not read the best part of the newspaper. He, and more particularly she, reads the headlines, skims the news, and runs the eye over anything that specially appeals, looks down the Births, Marriages and Deaths, and not much more. But this will not improve anyone's English.

Take a paper like the Spectator. Here you have modern journalistic writing at its best. Read the Leading Articles carefully each week. Read also the paragraphs summarising the news on the opening pages.

Read aloud, if you can; this will help to impress phrases and sentences on your mind. Observe how clear and concise and straightforward is the style. Of course, the articles will vary; they are not all written by the same pen; but those that follow immediately after the news paragraphs are always worth the student's attention. You will notice that the writer has something definite to say, and he says it plainly, in a way that is instantly understood. The words used will be to the point; there will be a good choice of language, yet never an unnecessary piling on of words. You may, or may not, agree with everything that is said; but that is not of paramount importance at the moment, as in this case you are reading in order to acquire a clear, easy style of writing rather than to gain special information. Nevertheless, you will be enlarging your mental outlook considerably.

In the same way, study the Editorials in any of the daily or weekly papers of high standing and reputation, avoiding the papers of the "sensational snippet" order. You will soon get to recognise whether the style is good or poor.

The British Weekly (London) is celebrated for its literary quality. It will be a gain if you read regularly the article on the front page, and "The Correspondence of Claudius Clear," which is a feature every week.

This is to start you on a course of reading that will give modernity to your style, and help to rid you of the antiquated expressions and mannerisms that are so noticeable in amateur work.

Mere "newspaper reading" may seem to you a disappointing beginning to the programme. "The newspaper is read by everybody every day," you may tell me, "and what has it done for their style?"

But I am not advocating that type of "newspaper reading." This isn't a question of reading some murder case, or imbibing the exhilarating information that some one met Mrs. Blank on Fifth Avenue the other day, and she looked sweet in a pale blue hat.

Leave all that part of the paper severely alone. Study the Editorials as you would study a book, since the writings of first-class journalists are excellent models for the amateur, a fact that is curiously overlooked by the student. Read a fixed amount each day, instead of relying on a haphazard picking up of a paper and a careless glance over its contents. Then, as a useful exercise, take the subject-matter of a paragraph, or an article, and see how you would have treated it; try if you can improve on it (after all, most things in this world can be improved upon if the right person does the improving). You will be surprised to find how interesting a study this will become in a very little while.

Do not misunderstand me: I am not advocating newspaper reading in place of classical works, but as a necessary and valuable addition to a writer's literary studies.

The Need for Enlarging the Vocabulary

Tens of thousands of people are conscious of vivid mental pictures, for one who is able to reproduce them in such a form that they become vivid pictures to others. And one reason for the inability of the majority to express their thoughts in writing is the paucity of their vocabulary, and their lack of the power to put words together in a convincing and accurate manner.

Girls often write to me, "I think such wonderful things in my brain; I'm sure I could write a book, if only people would give me a little encouragement," or, "if only I had time."

But if they had all the encouragement and all the time in the world, they could not transfer those wonderful thoughts from their brain to paper unless they had practice, the right words at their command, and the experience that comes from hard regular working at the subject.

What people do not realise is this: wonderful thoughts are surging through thousands of brains. They are fairly common inside people's heads; the difficulty is in getting them out of the head—as most of us soon find out when we start to write! I shall refer to this later on.

If you wish to write down your thoughts—no matter whether they are concerned with the emotions, or religion, or nature, or cookery—you must employ words; and the more subtle, or elevated, or complex the subject-matter of your thoughts, the greater need will there be for a wide choice of words, in order to express exactly the various grades and shades of meaning that will be involved.

If your vocabulary be small—i.e. if you only know the average words used by the average person—there is every chance that your writings will be flat and colourless, and no more interesting, or exciting, or instructive, or entertaining than the ordinary conversation of the average person.

Hence the necessity for enlarging your vocabulary, so that you have the utmost variety to choose from in the way of suitable words, expressive words, and beautiful words, (this last the modern amateur is apt to overlook).

The smallness of the vocabulary used by the average person to-day is partly due to the mass of feeble reading-matter with which the country was flooded in the years immediately preceding the War.

In addition to this, life had become very easy for the majority of folk in recent times; money was supposed to be life's sole requisite. Work of all kinds was "put out" as much as possible; we shirked physical labour; lessons were made as easy as they could be; games were played for us by professionals while we looked on; effort of every sort was distasteful to us. It has been said, that as a nation we were becoming flabby and inert, and were fast drifting into an exceedingly lazy, commonplace mental attitude. We boasted that we couldn't think (even though with many this was merely a pose); we seemed quite proud of ourselves when we proclaimed our indifference to all serious reading, and our inability to understand anything.

That pre-War period, given over to money-worship, not only curtailed our choice of words by its all-pervading tendency to mind-laziness, but it had its vulgarising effect upon our language, just as it had upon our dress, our mode of living, and our amusements.

Not only did we cease to take the trouble to speak correctly, but we almost ceased to be lucid! We made one word—slang or otherwise—do duty in scores of places where its introduction was either senseless or idiotic, rather than exert our minds to find the correct word for each occasion. Many people appeared to think that the use of slang was not only "smart," but quite clever; whereas nothing more surely indicates a poor order of intelligence.

My chief objection to a constant use of slang is not because it is outside the pale of classical English, but because it is so ineffective and feeble.

As a rule, slang words and phrases are, in the main, pointless and weak, for the simple reason that we use one word for every occasion when it happens to be the craze; and before long it comes to means nothing at all, even if it chanced to mean anything at the start—which it seldom does.

Our grandmothers objected to their own set using slang on the ground that it was "unladylike." The modern girl smiles at the term. "Who desires to be 'ladylike'?" inquires the advanced young person of to-day. Yet our grandmothers were right fundamentally; with their generation, the word "lady" implied a woman of education, intelligence, and refinement. The user of slang is the person who lacks these qualifications; she has neither the wit nor the knowledge to employ a better and more expressive selection of words.

Slang indicates, not advanced ideas, but ignorance—any parrot can repeat an expression, it takes a clever person always to use the right word.

Many people who constantly employ any word that happens to be current, do not really know what they are saying, neither do they attach any weight to their words; they merely repeat some inanity, because they have not the brains to say anything more intelligent, or they are too indolent to use what brains they have.

Notice how a set of big schoolgirls will, at one time, use the word "putrid," let us say, and apply it to everything, from a broken shoe-lace to examinations. And women will call everything "dinkie," or "ducky," or something equally enlightening and artistic, working the word all day long until it is ousted by another senseless expression.

What power of comparison has a girl, such as one I met recently, who, in the course of ten minutes described a hat as "awf'ly niffy," a man as "awf'ly sweet," a mountain as "awf'ly rippin'," and another girl as an "awful cat"?

What does it all amount to, this perversion of legitimate words or introduction of meaningless ones? Nothing—actually nothing. That is the pity of it. If these "ornaments of conversation" enabled one to grasp a point better, to see things more clearly, or to arrive at a conclusion more rapidly, I, for one, would gladly welcome them, as I welcome anything that will save time and labour. But, unfortunately, they only tend to dwarf the intelligence and to lessen the value of our speech.

I have enlarged on the undesirability of slang, because many amateurs think it will give brilliance, or smartness, or up-to-date-ness to their work. But it doesn't. It obscures rather than brightens; it tends to monotony instead of smartness. The beginner will be wise to avoid it, unless it is required legitimately in recording the conversation of a slangy person.

To enlarge your selection of words, you must read books of the essay type rather than fiction, as these usually give the widest range of English. Two authors stand out above all others in this connection—Ruskin and R.L. Stevenson. Both men had an extraordinary instinct for the right word on all occasions—the word that expressed exactly the idea each wished to convey.

Read some of Stevenson's essays slowly and carefully. Don't gobble them! You want to impress the words, and the connection in which they are used, on your mind. It is an effort to most of us to read slowly in these hustling times; yet nothing but deliberate, careful reading will serve to teach the correct use of words and their approximate values. And I need not remind you to look up in a dictionary the meaning of any word that is new to you.

Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies you will have read many times, I hope; if not, get it as soon as ever you can. His Poetry of Architecture will make a useful study; also Queen of the Air and Praeterita (his own biography). His larger works, while containing innumerable passages of great beauty, are so often overweighted with technical details and principles of art (some quite out-of-date now) that they become tedious at times. Yet there is so much in all of his writings to enlarge your working-list of words, that you will benefit by reading any of his books.

Among present-day writers I particularly recommend Sir A. Quiller-Couch, Dr. Charles W. Eliot; Dr. A.C. Benson, Dr. Edmund Gosse, Coulson Kernahan, and Augustine Birrell, whose volumes of essays will not only enlarge your vocabulary, but will prove particularly instructive in suggesting the right placing of words, and in giving you a correct feeling for their value.

Of course this does not exhaust the list of authors with commendable vocabularies; but it gives you something to start on.

Notice that the writers I have suggested do not necessarily use extraordinary words, or uncommon words, or very long-syllabled words, or ponderous and learned words. One great charm of their writings lies in the fact that they invariably use the word that is exactly right, the word that conveys better than any other word the thought or sensation they wished to convey. Sometimes it is an unusual word; sometimes it is a familiar word used in an unfamiliar connection; but in most cases you feel that the word used could not have been bettered—it sums up precisely, and conveys to your mind instantly, the thought that was in the author's mind.

Many amateurs fall into the error of thinking that an uncommon word, or a long word, or a word with an imposing sound, gives style to their writings, and they despise the simple words, considering them common-place. I heard an old clergyman in a small country church explain to the congregation, in the course of a sermon, that the words "mixed multitude" meant "an heterogeneous conglomeration"; but I think his rustic audience understood the simple Bible words better than they did his explanatory notes.

I remember seeing an examination paper, wherein a student had paraphrased the line—

"The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,"

as, "The bellowing cattle are meandering tardily over the neglected, untilled meadow land."

This is an instance of the wrong word being used in nearly every case; and as a complete sentence it would have been difficult to construct anything, on the same lines, that conveyed less the feeling Gray wished to convey when he wrote the poem!

Good writing is not dependent upon long or ornate or unusual words; it is the outcome of a constant use of the right word—the word that best conveys the author's idea.

If there be a choice between a complex word and a simple word, use the simple one.

Remember that the object of writing is not the covering of so much blank paper, nor the stringing together of syllables; it is the transference from the author's brain to other people's brains of certain thoughts and situations and sensations. And the best writing is that which conveys, by the simplest and most direct means, the clearest reproduction of the author's ideas.

The Charm of Musical Language

When Strauss put together his sound monstrosities, which he misnamed music, he was only echoing the general noise-chaos that had taken possession of the universe, permeating art and literature no less than everyday life. The nightmares of the cubists and futurists were merely undisciplined blatancy and harshness rendered in colour instead of in sound, and were further demonstrations of the crudity to which a nation is bound to revert when it wilfully discards the finer things of the soul in a mad pursuit of money.