ical Russian surname, or an Italian Christian name, may be wanted
for one of your stories. This will prevent your calling a Spaniard
"Pietro" or an Italian "Pedro."

3. Buy an old or a second-hand city directory. An out-of-date New York
or Chicago directory contains names enough, of all nationalities, both
Christian names and surnames, to last you a life-time and will cost
you little. But directories are not _absolutely_ trustworthy after
all.

4. When reading novels and short-stories, copy any names that
particularly strike you. Use only the first or the last name in every
case, of course, and do the same when selecting names from the
directory or from signs in the street. You would not name your hero
Richard Mansfield, nor his uncle John Wanamaker, but you might wish to
call the uncle Richard Wanamaker and make John Mansfield the hero.

5. Select from regular theatre programs names that please you, but
transpose the first and last names as recommended above. If you choose
a French Christian name from one of Henri Bernstein's plays, do not
take the surname of another character _in the same cast_ to go with
it. Rather take it from another French play, or from a French story in
a magazine.

You do not wish to find, when the time does come for your cast of
characters to be thrown upon the screen, that the director has found
it necessary to change half of your names. Make them so good and so
appropriate that there will be absolutely no excuse for altering them.

One thing to be remembered, however, is that the picture spectators of
today have been gradually educated up to expecting and approving many
things which the spectators of a few years ago would have looked upon
as too "highbrow." This is due in no small degree to the many screen
adaptations of literary classics and fictional successes generally
which have been made, as well as to the large number of stage plays
that have been transferred to the screen, for, of course, the authors,
publishers and dramatic producers have always stipulated that the
casts be kept as they originally were made out--except that
occasionally certain characters who in the stage-production of a
certain play were merely spoken about and described have been, in the
photoplay form, actually introduced, and thus added to the cast. But
the point is that there is no longer the frantic striving to keep
everything as "short and simple as possible" that once existed, and
this applies to everyth