with the reading public and relieved her from the necessity of teaching." Her last book is Shining Thrones of the Heart, dedicated "to my countrywomen who reign there." That this extraordinarily successful work had no successor is the fault of St. Elmo Murray. With the last words of the marriage service, his bride collapses and remains unconscious for two hours. As soon as she revives he declares to her with something of his sadly diminished fire and egotism:—

"To-day I snap the fetters of your literary bondage. There shall be no more books written. No more study. And that dear public you love so well must even help itself and whistle for a new pet. You belong solely to me!"

But though authors are still disposed to dower a leading man or woman with varied information they are equally inclined to denude a plot and a background of helpful explanation. A writer limits himself; he specializes in temperament. Hence one emotion, well analyzed, suffices for a book. Indeed, it is not easy to "tell" the well-written modern novel. "Oh," we say gropingly, "it is a study of foiled ambition"; or "it presents a new view of irresponsibility." And usually we add: "You must read it yourself, and carefully, to appreciate the delicacy of the conception, the orientation of an exceptional personality, the intimacy of experience"; and so on.

Excision, of course, makes for improved technique: from it is born our modern pride, the short-story. But sometimes a mundane reader, having finished a single-impression work, is irritably conscious of gaps in the narration. He feels as if he had been listening to a person who spoke only when he had something to say. Especially do last chapters produce gnawing curiosity in the mind and heart of that mundane reader: Did He die? or come back? or succeed? Did She do it? or make it? or get it? And, most of all, did They marry?

Now it may be that the books of yesterday went to the other extreme. Trollope scorned to leave the reader in any doubt regarding Mrs. Proudie's executive ability, or the Duke of Omnium's profits and losses. Bulwer conceals nothing that touches Pisistratus Caxton; Charles Lever could never be accused of economy of incident; Wilkie Collins is not reticent; Charles

Reade makes full confesssion of time, place, and action; and Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray all strictly observe the rule stated with conciseness and finality by the King in Alice: "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.' And the day before yesterday was even more generous with story minutiæ. Every hero and heroine, for example, was explained genealogically. It is a request for full particulars regarding Evelina's parents and grandparents that opens Miss Burney's "trifling production of a few idle hours"; and we know all details of the cruel fate that pursued the mother of the children of the Abbey-that mother on whose tombstone was recorded the fact that she was "Alike lovely and unfortunate."

Clarissa

Moreover, incidents were elaborated and reiterated. and Pamela relate the same incident to several persons who write it to each other and record it in their journals, finally returning the information to Clarissa or Pamela with comments, deductions, and prognostications that make the original matter hardly recognizable. And there is no lack of explanatory detail in Joseph Andrews or Peregrine Pickle or Udolpho. The authors recked little of time and less of space if the imparting of information were concerned.

Of this inclusive practice many pages are, of course, the consequence. Yet, although because of outward seeming, a twovolume nineteenth-century novel may depress and a seven-volume eighteenth-century novel may appal, still I feel that too much story is better than too little. A reader can always skip. And the especial value of this opportunity lies in the fact that it is the reader-not the author-who chooses the place to skip. A enjoys historical digressions and scorns flirtatious dialogue; B loathes both but thrills over a good fight; C skims past everything but character exposition and analysis of motive; while D pauses only when a laugh or a sob is possible. The reader alone knows what pleases him in a book. Taste is a personal and illogical quality. I know a circulating library enthusiast who objects to Italian backgrounds and Russian proper names, though she admires certain writers who are addicted to one or the other; a student of fiction-technique who delights in compiling examples of prevalences, deteriorations, and adumbrations;

and I myself confess to a passionate interest in what book-people eat. It is plain, then, that we three could read the same book with pleasure, but it is also plain that each of us would omit a page here and there. But my point is that we should all get something that we wanted.

Now when the author takes it upon himself to do the skipping, only the soul-mate of that author is thoroughly at peace. The mundane reader is annoyed. He may, of course, exert his imagination to fill out all lacunæ. Perhaps this is the result that the author is striving for, desiring, according to accepted theories of bettering the needy, to improve and stimulate the reader without letting him know it. Possibly, too, the elliptical writer is not unwilling to spare himself certain anxieties. Mark Twain tells of piteous struggles to end Pudd'nhead Wilson. When in desperation he had disposed of one important character by saying, "Rowena went out in the back yard after supper to see the fireworks and fell down in the well and got drowned," he was so pleased with the succinctness and finality of the statement that he got rid of two boys and two old ladies in the same way. "I was going to drown some of the others," he remarks, "but I gave up the idea partly because I believed that if I kept that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy with those people, and partly because it was not a large well and would not hold any more anyway."

Some libraries publish, at regular intervals, a list of "Pleasant Books." Two other lists would be helpful: Everything-Complete Books and Framework-Only Books. The mere naming of books has always been a popular means of disseminating information. Classified titles give keen pleasure, blessing him who writes and him who reads: for the compiler has the joy of expressing his personal conviction and the reader has the delight of disagreeing with it. It is safe to say that no one of us has ever glanced over a list of books without feeling outraged at the presence or absence of a particular volume. As a general thing, lists of books concern themselves with the Best Books as predestined for Boys, Girls, Tourists, Self-Makers, or for a proper appreciation of the Panama Canal, Shakespeare, or the Musical Glasses. But indices expurgatorii are not unknown. An early and inter

esting example is that one arranged by Francis Meres who sternly announced a number of Books to Be Censured. The twentieth-century reader learns that the sixteenth-century reader was warned away from Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Arthur of the Round Table, Huon of Bordeaux, and like suspicious characters. We realize to-day that to censure a book is to advertise it widely and profitably, and this, judging by the Stationers' Register, is what Meres succeeded in doing for the group of ballads and romances he held up to public scorn. We doubt Meres's sincerity as a censor just as we doubt the sincerity of any compiler of a list of books: the opportunity to pose, to interpret the Self, is wellnigh irresistible.

Even as lists of titles bring cheer and satisfaction to some hearts, so do proper names to others. The mention of Places Especially is this true

and People may become an obsession. in the case of poets. There are masters of verse whose names bring to some people only a confused and harrowing recollection of efforts to "identify all the allusions and references." Without doubt, the star of such a group is Milton. He abandons himself to the use of proper names with a completeness and prodigality that is nothing short of dissipation. The mundane reader, though panoplied in a working knowledge of the Bible, of mythology, of geography, of mediæval romance, will find his literary armor showing gaps after an encounter with Book I of Paradise Lost. And though Horace, Virgil and Ovid, Ariosto, Tasso and Spenser be added to that reader, though his mind hold in solution The Shorter Catechism, though he have recourse (according to his generation) to Mangnall's Questions, The Century Dictionary of Proper Names, or What Every Child Should Know, yet will he read Milton in general with helpless suspicion of unreadiness, and Book I of Paradise Lost in particular, with hopeless realization of incompetence.

man.

The mere pronounciation of proper names often marks the As decorative and declarative as the labels on a steamer trunk is the correct accenting or slurring of München, Firenza, and Napoli; or Pall Mall, Magdalen, and Newcastle; or Spokane, Los Angeles, and New Orleans; while culture and position are

assured by a proper rendition of Carew, Cowper, and Clough; or Tumulty, Carnegie, and Huerta.

Pronunciation omniscience, however, is not to be encouraged. The man who knows everything about accents and orthoepy is apt to be imbued with a militant and missionary spirit. His conscience does not recognize Ephraim's right to join himself to Dictionary and Usage idols. But it is not only the doctrinaires in information who will not let Ephraim alone: correspondence schools pursue, book agents overtake, libraries allure.

After all, though, library is only a relative term. The word belongs equally to a be-carved and re-frescoed structure, packed with volumes, and to a single book. A library may even be a state of mind. Hardly more was the one I remember most gratefully and clearly. Wide shelves were built across a side of the room, and from my accustomed retreat among the unbound magazines on the top shelf I had a view of the whole world. What the open doors revealed was of no value : just rooms. But the open window disclosed the course of things.

My outlook was framed in a great wistaria that looped and twisted itself up to the roof and then across to the magnolia tree on the banquette beyond. The mossy brick path below the window led around a doll and kitten cemetery, past a rabbit pen, and then to the steps of the back gallery where the kitchen contingent, headed by Aunt Mary, went through fascinating evolutions with egg-beaters, spice pounders, dish-pans, and yellow bowls. Opposite the back gallery, a vegetable garden frankly admitted what city soil and rabbits and chickens can do for corn and okra and butter-beans. Beyond I could see a small, strangely shaped house, a boat intended for stationary land service, and a circus ring of modest diameter. Scattered among

these facts of life were trees whereof I might eat the fruit: fig and banana, orange and Japan plum. Against the division fence at the back grew in plain sight four-o'clocks ready for stringing, elephant-ears useful as hats or aprons, Spanish-daggers tabooed as weapons, and china-balls equally tabooed as ammunition.

What more of knowledge is there? Grievous and disappoint