large letters, and many new paragraphs. That is what makes it so much more
interesting than long, close paragraphs like this, which the printers hate
as much as I do, and which they call "_solid matter_" as if to indicate
that, in proportion, such paragraphs are apt to lack the light, ethereal
spirit of all life.

Second, in conversation, you need not give authorities, if it be only
clear that you are not pretending originality. Do not say, as dear
Pemberton used to, "I have a book at home, which I bought at the sale of
Byles's books, in which there is an account of Parry's first voyage, and
an explanation of the red snow, which shows that the red snow is," &c.,
&c., &c. Instead of this say, "Red snow is," &c., &c., &c. Nobody will
think you are producing this as a discovery of your own. When the
authority is asked for, there will be a fit time for you to tell.

Third, never explain, unless for extreme necessity, who people are. Let
them come in as they do at the play, when you have no play-bill. If what
you say is otherwise intelligible, the hearers will find out, _if it is
necessary_, as perhaps it may not be. Go back, if you please, to my
account of Agatha, and see how much sooner we should all have come to
dinner if she had not tried to explain about all these people. The truth
is, you cannot explain about them. You are led in farther and farther.
Frank wants to say, "George went to the Stereopticon yesterday." Instead
of that he says, "A fellow at our school named George, a brother of Tom
Tileston who goes to the Dwight, and is in Miss Somerby's room,--not the
Miss Somerby that has the class in the Sunday school,--she's at the
Brimmer School,--but her sister,"--and already poor Frank is far from
George, and far from the Stereopticon, and, as I observe, is wandering
farther and farther. He began with George, but, George having suggested
Tom and Miss Somerby, by the same law of thought each of them would have