the first minute you had her to
yourself, if you felt reasonably sure that she cared for you, and tell
her what she meant to you--perhaps so low that even the author of the
story couldn't hear what you said, and would have to describe what
he saw afterward in order to let his reader guess what had really
happened.

It is a lamentable fact that the description of a person's features
gives absolutely no idea of his appearance. It is better to give a
touch or two, and let the imagination do the rest. "Hair like raven's
wing," and the "midnight eyes," and many similar things, may be very
well spared. The personal charms of the lover may be brought out
through the mediations of the lovee, much better than by pages of
description.

The law of compensation must always have its place in the artistic
story. Those who do wrong must suffer wrong--those who work must be
rewarded, if not in the tangible things they seek, at least in the
conscious strength that comes from struggling. And "poetic justice,"
which metes out to those who do the things that they have done, is
relentless and eternal, in art, as well as in life.

"Style" is purely an individual matter, and, if it is anything at all,
it is the expression of one's self. Zola has said that, "art is nature
seen through the medium of a temperament," and the same is true of
literature. Bunner's stories are as thoroughly Bunner as the man who
wrote them, and _The Badge of Courage_ is nothing unless it be the
moody, sensitive, half-morbid Stephen Crane.

Observation of things nearest at hand and the sympathetic
understanding of people are the first requisites. Do not place the
scene of a story in Europe if you have never been there, and do not
assume to comprehend the inner life of a Congressman if you have never
seen one. Do not write of mining camps if you have never seen a
mountain, or of society if you have never worn evening dress.

James Whitcomb Riley has made himself loved and honoured by writing of
the simple things of home, and Louisa Alcott's name is a household
word because she wrote of the little women whom she knew. Eugene Field
has written of the children that he loved and understood, and won
a truer fame than if he had undertaken _The Master_ of Zangwill.
Kipling's life in India has given us _Plain Tales from the Hills_ and
_The Jungle Book_, which Mary E. Wilkins could not have written in
spite of the genius which made her New England stories the most
effect