t least it fulfilled the meaning of the original edition of
Pope's famous line, for it was certainly 'all without a plan.' I had
appropriate scenery in my mind, no end of typical people to draw, and
one or two moving actualities to work from. But I had forgotten the
plot. To attempt a novel without a definite scheme of some sort is very
like trying to make a Christmas pudding without a cloth. Ruth Pinch was
uncertain as to whether her first venture at a pudding might not turn
out a soup. My novelistic effort, I am sorry to confess, had no cohesion
in it. Its parts got loose in the cooking, and I have reason to think
that most people who tried it found the dish repellent. The cashier
assured me that I had sent down the circulation of the Saturday issue by
sixteen thousand. I had excellent reasons for disbelieving this
circumstantial statement in the fact that the Saturday issue had never
reached that number, but I have no doubt I did a deal of damage. There
had been an idea in 'Marsh Hall,' and what with interpolated ballads and
poetic excursions and alarums of all sorts, I had found in it matter
enough to fill out my four cantos. I set out with the intent to work
that same idea through the pages of 'Grace Forbeach,' but it was too
scanty for the uses of a three-volume novel, at least in the hands of a
tiro. I know one or two accomplished gentlemen who could make it serve
the purpose admirably, and, perhaps, I myself might do something with it
at a pinch at this time of day. Anyhow, as it was, the cloth was too
small to hold the pudding, and, in the process of cooking, I was driven
to the most desperate expedients. To drop the simile and to come to the
plain facts of the case, I sent all my wicked and superfluous people
into a coal-mine, and there put an end to them by an inrush of water. I
forget what became of the hero, but I know that some of the most
promising characters dropped out of that story, and were no more heard
of. The sub-editor used occasionally, for my encouragement, to show me
letters he received, denouncing the work, and asking wrathfully when it
would end.

Whilst I am about 'Grace Forbeach,' it may be worth while to tell the
story of the champion printer's error of my experience. I wrote at the
close of the story:

'Are there no troubles now?' the lover asks.
'Not one, dear Frank. Not one.'
And then, in brackets, thus [] I set the words:
[White line.]

This was a technic