Hints to Pilgrims

by Charles S. Brooks

Nor was a lady novelist of the older school less deliberate. When a bold adventurer appears, she holds her heroine to the rearward of her affection. "I'll make no decision yet for Lady Emily," she thinks. "This gay fellow may have a wife somewhere. His smooth manner with the ladies comes with practice. It is soon enough if I decide upon their affair in my second volume. Perhaps, after all, the captain may prove to be the better man."

And yet this spacious method requires an ample genius. A smaller writer must take a map and put his finger beforehand on his destination. When a hero fares forth singing in the dawn, the author must know at once his snug tavern for the night. The hazard of the morning has been matched already with a peaceful twilight. The seeds of time are planted, the very harvest counted when the furrow's made. My heart goes out to that young author who sits locked in his study, munching his barren apple. He must perfect his scenario before he starts. How easy would be his task, if only he could just begin, "Once upon a time," and follow his careless contrivance.

I know a teacher who has a full-length novel unpublished and concealed. Sometimes, I fancy, at midnight, when his Latin themes are marked, he draws forth its precious pages. He alters and smooths his sentences while the household sleeps. And even in his classroom, as he listens to the droning of a conjugation, he leaps to horse. Little do his students suspect, as they stutter with their verbs, that with their teacher, heedless of convention, rides the dark lady of his swift adventure.

I look with great awe on an acquaintance who averages more than one story a week and publishes them in a periodical called Frisky Stories. He shifts for variety among as many as five or six pen-names. And I marvel at a friend who once wrote a story a day for a newspaper syndicate. But his case was pathetic. When I saw him last, he was sitting on a log in the north forest, gloomily estimating how many of his wretched stories would cover the wood-pulp of the state. His health was threatened. He was resting from the toil

"Of dropping buckets into empty wells,

And growing old in drawing nothing up."

From all this it must appear that the real difficulty is in finding a sufficient plot. The start of a plot is easy, but it is hard to carry it on and end it. I myself, on any vacant morning, could get a hero tied hand and foot inside a cab, but then I would not know where to drive him. I have thought, in an enthusiastic moment, that he might be lowered down a manhole through the bottom of the cab. This is an unprecedented villainy, and I have gone so far as to select a lonely manhole in Gramercy Park around the corner from the Players' Club. But I am lost how my hero could be rescued. Covered with muck, I could hardly hope that his lady would go running to his arms. I have, also, a pretty pencil for a fight in the ancient style, with swords upon a stairway. But what then? And what shall I do with the gallant Percival de Vere, after he has slid down the rope from his beetling dungeon tower? As for ladies—I could dress up the pretty creatures, but would they move or speak upon my bidding? No one would more gladly throw a lady and gentleman on a desert island. At a pinch I flatter myself I could draw a roaring lion. But in what circumstance should the hungry cannibals appear? These questions must tax a novelist heavily.

Or might I not, for copy, strip the front from that building opposite?

"The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,

The inside gaped: exposed to day,

Right and wrong and common and queer,

Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay."

Every room contains a story. That chair, the stove, the very tub for washing holds its secrets. The stairs echo with the tread of a dozen lives. And in every crowd upon the street I could cast a stone and find a hero. There is a seamstress somewhere, a locksmith, a fellow with a shovel. I need but the genius to pluck out the heart of their mystery. The rumble of the subway is the friction of lives that rub together. The very roar of cities is the meshing of our human gear.

I dream of this world I might create. In romantic mood, a castle lifts its towers into the blue dome of heaven. I issue in spirit with Jeanne d'Arc from the gate of Orleans, and I play the tragedy with changing scene until the fires of Rouen have fallen into ashes. I sail the seas with Raleigh. I scheme with the hump-backed Richard. Out of the north, with wind and sunlight, my hero comes singing to his adventures.