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THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

Official Organ of the Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle VOLUME VI., 1885-'86.-Ten numbers in a volume. CIRCULATION OVER 50,000.

"THE CHAUTAUQUAN Covers a wide field and, contains a large amount of instructive and helpful writing."-The Boston Herald. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: THE CHAUTAUQUAN, $1.50. In clubs of Five or more, each, $1.25.

Address, Dr. T. L. FLOOD, Meadville, Pa.

The latest issue of this work comprises

A DICTIONARY

containing 118,000 Words, and 3000 Engravings,

A CAZETTEER OF THE WORLD 25,000 Titles, with pronunciation, &c., (Just added) and A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY nearly 10,000 Noted Persons; also various Tables, ALL IN ONE BOOK.

It has 3000 more Words in its vocabulary than are found. in any other American Dictionary, and nearly three times the number of Engravings.

It is the best practical English Dictionary extant.-Quarterly Review, London.

Webster is Standard Authority in the Gov't Printing Office, and with the U. S. Supreme Court, and is recommended by the State Sup'ts of Schools in 36 States, and by the leading College Presidents of the U. S. and Canada.

Published by G. & C. MERRIAM & CO., Springfield, Mass.

Vol. 1-No. 9.

STUDIES IN FICTION.

COINCIDENCES.

ROVERBS are a sort of second-hand wisdom to supply people that are not able to do their own thinking with ready-made current conversational coin they may utter without fear of detection. They are generally moss-grown with error, but from their epigrammatic form and venerable respectability, find few who dare dispute them. Put all the popular proverbs in a bag, shake them well and draw them out blindly; three out of every five will not be true, and the others will need repairing. That "Truth is stranger than fiction" is but partially true. Fiction has a broader field, by far, than truth. Tell the most wonderful true story since the creation, and fiction adds a few artistic touches and surpasses the reality. Here the Yankee makes his reputation! We read in the daily papers of strange coincidences, wondrous meetings and marvellous similarities, and in amazement we say, "If that were written in a book, we would declare the author had gone beyond the possibilities of life." In these special instances, truth is stranger than fiction; but, consider their rarity. In our country of fifty million souls, with the lines of daily duty and action radiating from each, touching, crossing, recrossing and absorbing the lines of those around them, like an infinite net work, the wonder is not that there are so many coincidences, but that there are so ftw. In fiction, however, they are the rule, not the exception.

Sorrowing parents, in novels, spend thousands of dollars searching for their stolen child, and employ emissaries to scour the globe; everything that human ingenuity can devise is tried to discover him, but all in vain. Years later, a fair-haired newsboy, run over by a passing wagon, is brought to that bereaved house. While the little torn jacket is tenderly loosened that his wounds may be cared for, the mother of the home sees on the bare, thin neck the locket placed by her own hands on her baby boy years before; and, as she faints at the bed-side, cries out in a delirium of joy, "I have found my son that was lost!" Very pretty! but it is stranger than truth.

WM. G. JORDAN, Editor.

The noble maiden, left an immense fortune, on condition of marrying a certain Duke, magnificently scorns the heritage; she will be free; money will not buy her; so she marries the Algeron she has selected, and to their joyful surprise, they then discover that Algeron and the Duke are identical. This ordinary coincidence is an every-day feature in novels, in one form or another; but it is a century-plant in our age, for it happens only once in a hundred years or so.

The Parisian detective discovers the assassin of the Prince by a chemical analysis of the shadow cast by him on a cellar-door the evening of the tragedy. Then the author, ashamed of the extent of his inventiveness, pleads "Truth is stranger than fiction," and thinks it a sufficient excuse for making fiction stranger than truth.

The greater an author's power becomes, the less is he dependent on these "blue lights" of sensation for his effects. They have a certain place in fiction, it is true, but let us have once in a while a simple tale, direct, forcible and true, because it concerns human nature, acts and feelings.

MARKING BOOKS.

O a thoughtful person, a most delightful companion in reading is a lead pencil. Abstractly viewed, this slim cylinder, dressed in black, seems dull and prosaic, but careful education will develop it into a most talkative literary friend. Marking books encourages slow and careful reading, aids mental digestion, and rouses and inspires original thought, which should be the vital aim and end of all literary work. If a book requires no thought on your part, if it does not stimulate, awaken new ideas and conceptions, cast it aside, it is beneath your capacity; time spent over it is wofully wasted. The only value of that book is, that perhaps it may serve as an intellectual primer to some lesser mind. If your reading does not satisfy you, try this method.

Select a good book, and as you read it watch the author's mood, put yourself in sympathy with the theme, yet do not accept the author's verdict of men and things simply because he is the author; think it out for yourself aided by the light he gives you, and make your own deductions. You may be right and he be wrong. Do not be deceived by gold

plated sophistries, or mistake tinted common-places for genuine sentiment. If you disagree from the writer, write your objections in the margin of the page clearly, strongly, and just as you mean them. Have a respect for your own individuality. Should the author's views accord with your own, follow out the line of thought he suggests, consult his authorities; should an expression of similar sentiment from some other gift mind occur to you, jot it down. You will be richer mentally for the writing.

It is a mistake to think that marking a book consists of a series of lead-pencil ejaculations, "Oh, my!" "How nice!" "Very grand!" "Ain't that too cute!" or Ha, ha!" If one has nothing to say, there are better ways than this of saying it. The pencil should be trained to think before it writes. The marginal notes of a beginner may not be permeated with the poetic beauty of Shakespeare; the magnificent force of Milton may be absent, and the vocabulary possessed by Noah Webster may not be actively present. These are of minor import; the value is not in the notes themselves, but in their reflex action on the mind of the writer. The real good is not always apparent. Remember, much that is best, truest, and noblest in life, like the icebergs the mariner meets at sea, shows only one-third to the eye, the rest, though hidden deep from human sight, is the foundation, the balancing part that gives stability, character and poise to what we do see. You will be a much better companion to yourself if you read thus, for, as the poet

says:

"As I walked by myself I talked to myself,

And myself replied to me."

But a better way, after all, is to talk to some one else, if you can find the "some one," who enters heartily into the reading with thought, sympathy and interest, and is willing to exchange views at their par value.

JUSTICE TO AUTHORS.

N all novels of plot there is some incident, development or discovery, that the author keeps secret

from his readers so that the interest may be kept keenly alive to the very end. Upon this one mystery the whole novel turns, and the whole power of the story focuses. It is the kernel, the pith, in fact it is the novel itself. When this is known the interest drops, the characters lose their fascinating realness, and the story is told.

In his silent room, by the midnight lamp, does the author ponder over some brilliant plot, odd and original, that will dazzle and bewilder the most astute novel reader. The plan readily ripens in his fertile brain, and by the aid of his two co-workers, pen and ink, the idea is developed and amplified. By careful phrases thrown out in the course of the story he deceives the reader, mystifies him, baffles his shrewdest guesses and most ingenious suppositions, tending to make the novel fascinating by keeping his reader constantly on the alert to know the end. In so far, the writer has made a success. He has the battery ar

ranged, the mine prepared and the performance ready on payment by the reader of the price of the book. Then comes some blundering critic, brandishing his torch of criticism, and explodes the whole plan. His method is generally something like this:

"Even shrewd readers of The Ghost's Eye-glass do not suspect, until they have nearly completed the book, that the grandmother of the Count and the uncle of the Marquis are twins. The body discovered in the court-yard is not that of Aristides Fitz-Hugh, but a tramp who has assumed the dress of Aristides. The detectives were wrong, too, in saying that Major Cutlass murdered the rightful heir, as the latter is now alive and well, and only went off secretly to St. Petersburg to interview the Czar. for an article, illustrated with wood-cuts, for an American daily. We commend the story to our readers."

What interest does a reader have in a book when he is told all about it? It is nearly as refreshing as eating a sandwich with the bread and meat absent, and as progressive as sailing in a balloon with a hole in it. Such criticism is not fair to the author. You might almost as well reprint the story as expose the plot; at least in some books where plot is everything.

An outline of a novel is useful to readers, and does not injure the author. The titles of some books are so deceptive that we could form a clearer conception of their contents if they had no title at all. Let the critic tell us what the book is about, where the scene is laid, the style of the writing, and whether the story be of love, war, murder, lost diamonds, or life among the pirates. Give him full freedom to air his personal opinions about the "vein of quiet humor," "the rare combination of character-drawing and descriptive power," will add to his reputation," "unique beauties," and other critical stereotypes. When he approaches the crisis, the denouement, the unravelling of the mystery, let justice to the author keep him silent. The art of silence is a difficult one to learn, and the devotees thereof are but few.

64

ABOUT

AUTHORS

Pray you, sit down!

For now we sit to chat."

-ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's lectures are selling in England at one penny each.

Mr. Edgar Saltus, at present in Paris, has in press of Messrs. Williams & Norgate, publishers of Herbert Spencer's works, a history of anti-theistic thought under the title of The Anatomy of Negation.

Gen. Lew Wallace will illustrate Genevra by Mrs. Wallace, to be published by R. Worthington & Co. The number of artist-authors are few; it seems so much easier to picture beauties in nature with the pen than with the pencil.