And legends strange, of the deep,
How the witching sound of the siren's song
Can lull the tempest to sleep.

When moonlight falls on a crystal sea,
When the clouds have backward rolled,
The mermaids sing their low sweet songs,
And their harp strings are of gold.

The billows come from the vast unknown--
From their far-away unseen home;
The waves bring shells to the sandy bar,
And the fairies dance on the foam.

The Technique of the Short Story

An old rule for those who would be well-dressed says: "When you have
finished, go to the mirror and see what you can take off." The same
rule applies with equal force to the short story: "When you have
written it out, go over it carefully, and see what you can take out."

Besides being the best preparation for the writing of novels,
short-story writing is undoubtedly, at the present time, the best
paying and most satisfactory form of any ephemeral literary work. The
qualities which make it successful are to be attained only by constant
and patient practice. The real work of writing a story may be brief,
but years of preparation must be worked through before a manuscript,
which may be written in an hour or so, can present an artistic result.

The first and most important thing to consider is the central idea.
There are only a few ideas in the world, but their ramifications are
countless, and one need never despair of a theme. Your story may be
one of either failure or success, but it must have the true ring.
Given the man and the circumstances, we should know his action.

The plot must unfold naturally; otherwise it will be a succession of
distinct sensations, rather than a complete and harmonious whole.

There is no better way to produce this effect than to follow Edmund
Russell's rule of colour in dress: "When a contrasting colour is
introduced, there should be at least two subordinate repetitions of
it."

Each character should appear, or be spoken of, at least twice before
his main action. Following this rule makes one of the differences
between artistic and sensational literature.

The heroine of a dime novel always finds a hero to rescue her in the
nick of time, and perhaps she never sees him again. In the artistic
novel, while the heroine may see the rescuer first at the time she
needs him most, he never disappears altogether from the story.

Description is a thing which is much abused. T