to his offspring; and I therefore venture to address to those whom it
may concern, and to those only, a few words on the Art of Story-telling.

The chief essential for this line of business, yet one that is much
disregarded by many young writers, is the having a story to tell. It is
a common supposition that the story will come if you only sit down with
a pen in your hand and wait long enough--a parallel case to that which
assigns one cow's tail as the measure of distance between this planet
and the moon. It is no use 'throwing off' a few brilliant ideas at the
commencement, if they are only to be 'passages that lead to nothing;'
you must have distinctly in your mind at first what you intend to say at
last. 'Let it be granted,' says a great writer (though not one
distinguished in fiction), 'that a straight line be drawn from any one
point to any other point;' only you must have the 'other point' to begin
with, or you can't draw the line. So far from being 'straight,' it goes
wabbling aimlessly about like a wire fastened at one end and not at the
other, which may dazzle, but cannot sustain; or rather what it does
sustain is so exceedingly minute, that it reminds one of the minnow
which the inexperienced angler flatters himself he has caught, but which
the fisherman has in fact previously put on his hook for bait.

This class of writer is not altogether unconscious of the absence of
dramatic interest in his composition. He writes to his editor (I have
read a thousand such letters): 'It has been my aim, in the enclosed
contribution, to steer clear of the faults of the sensational school of
fiction, and I have designedly abstained from stimulating the
unwholesome taste for excitement.' In which high moral purpose he has
undoubtedly succeeded; but, unhappily, in nothing else. It is quite true
that some writers of fiction neglect 'story' almost entirely, but then
they are perhaps the greatest writers of all. Their genius is so