features of any locality the less you stay there the better. The man who
has lived in Switzerland all his life can never describe it (to the
outsider) so graphically as the (intelligent) tourist; just as the man
who has science at his fingers' ends does not succeed so well as the man
with whom science has not yet become second nature, in making an
abstruse subject popular.

Nor is it to be supposed that a story with very accurate local colouring
cannot be written, the scenes of which are placed in a country which the
writer has never beheld. This requires, of course, both study and
judgment, but it can be done so as to deceive, if not the native, at
least the Englishman who has himself resided there. I never yet knew an
Australian who could be persuaded that the author of 'Never Too Late to
Mend' had not visited the underworld, or a sailor that he who wrote
'Hard Cash' had never been to sea. The fact is, information, concerning
which dull folks make so much fuss, can be attained by anybody who
chooses to spend his time that way; and by persons of intelligence (who
are not so solicitous to know how blacking is made) can be turned, in a
manner not dreamt of by cram-coaches, to really good account.

The general impression perhaps conveyed by the above remarks will be
that to those who go to work in the manner described--for many writers
of course have quite other processes--story-telling must be a mechanical
trade. Yet nothing can be farther from the fact. These preliminary
arrangements have the effect of so steeping the mind in the subject in
hand, that when the author begins his work he is already in a world
apart from his everyday one; the characters of his story people it; and
the events that occur to them are as material, so far as the writer is
concerned, as though they happened under his roof. Indeed, it is a
question for the metaphysician whether the professional story-teller has