Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

this time, and you feel that your work has not been

in vain.

What then is interesting to the reader? That which is new to him. It may almost be said that we spend our lives in the search after novelty-new truth, new power, new beauty. Not always that which is absolutely new that which is relatively new will suffice. It may be found in books, in history, in legend, in speculation. Still better for the young investigator it may be found elsewhere. We have said that the world is full of new things- very simple many of them are too which if we only sharpen our senses a little we shall discover. Perhaps it is because they are so simple, that we overlook them so often or fail to appreciate them. When you were tramping through the woods last Saturday you found growing wild in an out-of-the-way spot a great bed of white violets. What a discovery! You had seen these beautiful flowers tenderly cultivated in your aunt's garden, but you never dreamed that they were to be found growing wild so near your own home. Why, you can write a delightful account of this and your schoolmates will be far more interested in it than they would in any essay on plants carefully written up out of botanies and encyclopædias, or in any sentimental rhapsodizing over flowers in general. Leave the first kind of writing to specialists in this field of natural science, and the second to the poets. Not that all emotional expression is to be discouraged. By no means. Only let it be spontaneous, genuine, and not carried to excess. And on the other hand, if you care more for the scientific aspect of things, there is no reason why you cannot do

original investigation, and so find material for original writing. Instead of copying from others, simply record what you have seen yourself.

Late in the evening of that same Saturday, as you were trudging wearily homeward with your bunch of white violets, you stopped by the edge of the marsh to listen to the concert of the frogs. You were reminded of the story of the Irishman who was belated under somewhat similar circumstances. He was anxious to find the shortest way home,' you know, and when a mischievous little frog down in the slough spoke up in a high-keyed voice telling him to "cut across, cut across, cut across," he somewhat hesitatingly ventured. He was getting deeper and deeper in the mire with every step however when one old croaker came to his rescue with the sage advice, delivered in a stately orotund, to "go round about, go round about, go round about." Travelers in Greece assert that in the Thessalian marshes to-day may be heard the same strange chorus, Brekkekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax, brekkekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax, which we know Aristophanes heard two thousand years ago. Now your frogs doubtless were neither Greek nor Hibernian, but they spoke none the less distinctly. What did they say? Could you catch it exactly? Could you reproduce it, even approximately? It might be worth your while to try. Aristophanes caught and reproduced so well the croak of his native frogs that that line of outlandish Greek stands to-day as one of the monuments to his genius.

But you live in the city? and you cannot go on Saturday tramps finding wood-flowers and listening to

frog-concerts? Very well. How many sparrows flew up from the curbstone this morning when you turned the corner into Elm Street? You could not count them, of course, but you could make a rough estimate. Perhaps some of them did not fly up, they are such bold creatures none of your timid wild-birds that will not let you get within gun-shot of them. Now find out how widely distributed these English sparrows are. You will hardly find that in books; you will have to ask some one who has been in Boston and New Orleans and San Francisco. You will then get a good general idea of the entire number of these birds to be found in the country at present. Next, find out when they were introduced here from Europe, and compute the rate of increase. Why do they thrive so here? Will this thing continue? Or is there a natural limit that prevents any particular form of animal or vegetable life from exterminating all other forms? If so, what is this natural limit and when is it reached? Well, we are getting into deep water, and we may not get out. But no matter. It is to be hoped you do not believe that asking questions is the special prerogative of fools. There are many questions that no fool was ever capable of asking. Indeed there is

scarcely a better test of a man's intelligence than the sort of questions he asks. And so our questions may go unanswered. What then? We have at least had something to think about and to write about.

There was another thing you noticed this morning. The little green-painted flower-pot with its blooming geranium was not to be seen in its customary place on the window-sill of a certain house; and a carriage

that looked suspiciously like a doctor's was waiting before the door. Every morning for several weeks that pink geranium had greeted you, making a bright spot in the gloom of the narrow tenement-street. At noon

when the sun beat in there pitilessly, the flower had disappeared. A few streets back there are houses with great conservatories filled with gorgeous tropical plants. A gardener works among them constantly. But these flowers you suspect are kept for show, and you have been more interested in the little geranium whose comings and goings gave evidence of loving care. Why, is it possible that you have ever sat for half an hour, scratching your head and gnawing the end of your pen-holder trying to think of "something to write about"?

If you have difficulty in finding something to write about, you may be sure it is because you have a wrong idea as to what constitutes a proper theme. Perhaps you think it should be something remote in time or place, some description of Greenland or story of the South Sea Islands, some event in the past, some theory, some prophecy of the future--something in short that you never have seen, that has scarcely ever occupied your thoughts at all, and that in consequence you know little or nothing about. If such be your idea it is not strange that you should have to puzzle a long time before lighting upon what seems to you a suitable subject. And then you will have to rack your brains a longer time to find something to write upon the subject, or else take refuge in what somebody else has written. Now "racking the brains" is a thing good enough in itself, only we do not want to have too much of it to

do at the outset. What we want to do first is to write. Then after a while we shall find that the expression of thought has grown comparatively so easy that we can devote nearly all our time and energy to the thought itself. Therefore do not seek too far for material. Be satisfied for the present with home-topics and homethoughts. You are thinking about something perhaps every waking moment of your life. You talk fast enough too when you are among your companions, and without even a thought of its difficulty. It ought to be almost as easy to write; and it is. You will find it

talk, taking the

so if you only write as you think and same subjects and treating them in much the same way. And you will find too that writing, far from being a task, is a real pleasure.

Is it something new that you want? The chances are just as good that you will find it right at home as elsewhere. A thousand aspiring, or, it may be, driven and desperate, young essayists have written upon the genius of Napoleon and the pleasures of hope and the blessings of civilization; but ten to one nobody has ever yet written about your grandfather's barn with all its denizens from the calves in the basement to the pigeons in the roof, with its pulley-fork and grain chutes, its harness room and machinery sheds, and the inexhaustible resources for fun in its spacious carriage room and haymow on a rainy day. The loving and truthful touches which you are sure to give to descriptions of this character will be worth more than all the artificial glamor your fancy may throw over “cloudcapped towers and gorgeous palaces.'

You have made a mistake at times, perhaps, in im

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »