he artistic short story. It is
possible to convey the impression of a threatening sky and a stormy
sea without doing more than alluding to the crash of the surf against
the shore. The mind of the reader accustomed to subtle touches will at
once picture the rest.

An element of strength is added also by occasionally referring an
impression to another sense. For instance, the newspaper poet writes:
"The street was white with snow," and makes his line commonplace
doggerel. Tennyson says: "The streets were _dumb_ with snow," and his
line is poetry.

"Blackening the background" is a common fault with story writers. In
many of the Italian operas, everybody who does not appear in the final
scene is killed off in the middle of the last act. This wholesale
slaughter is useless as well as inartistic. The true artist does not,
in order that his central figure may stand out prominently, make his
background a solid wall of gloom. Yet gloom has its proper place, as
well as joy.

In the old tragedies of the Greeks, just before the final catastrophe,
the chorus is supposed to advance to the centre of the theatre and
sing a bacchanal of frensied exultation.

In the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, just before the death of Antigone and
her lover, the chorus sings an ode which makes one wonder at its
extravagant expression. When the catastrophe occurs, the mystery is
explained. Sophocles meant the sacrifice of Antigone to come home with
its full force; and well he attained his end by use of an artistic
method which few of our writers are subtle enough to recognise and
claim for their own purposes.

"High-sounding sentences," which an inexperienced writer is apt to put
into the mouths of his people, only make them appear ridiculous. The
schoolgirl in the story is too apt to say: "The day has been most
unpleasant," whereas the real schoolgirl throws her books down with a
bang, and declares that she has "had a perfectly horrid time!"

Her grammar may be incorrect, but her method of expression is true to
life, and there the business of the writer ends.

Put yourself in your hero's place and see what you would do under
similar circumstances. If you were in love with a young woman, you
wouldn't get down on your knees, and swear by all that was holy that
you would die if she didn't marry you, at the same time tearing your
hair out by handfuls, and then endeavour to give her a concise
biography of yourself.

You would put your arm around her,