id="pgepubid00008">Founded on Fact.

A large lot of ornithologists assembled the other day at Mr. J. C. Stevens's Auction Rooms to attend the sale of an egg of the Great Auk—a seafowl, 'Arry, not a falcon. Great Auks' eggs are precious. This one was knocked down to an enthusiastic gentleman for 160 guineas. Some years ago two eggs of a Great Auk, sold, of course, by auktion, fetched, respectively, 100 and 200 guineas, although both broken, and that before they were knocked down. Surely the Great Auk must have been the original bird signified in tradition under the name of the legendary goose that laid the golden eggs.

The Premier of the French Cabinet may be well described as "Nulli Secundus." He is second to nobody, for the President is Nobody—to speak of.

FURNISHING FICTIONISTS.

In the Atalanta Magazine, for this month, (which by its title, should be ahead of all competitors until the homme à la pomme appears) Mr. Walter Besant has an article "On the writing of Novels," in which he offers his advice to young girls afflicted with irrepressible scribblemania,—i.e. "girls who try to write stories, and burn to write novels,"—as to the best and easiest means of attaining their object. Advice gratis is, as we all know, of the gratis't value, and Mr. Besant offers his two penn'orth-of-"all-sorts and conditions," to embryonic authoresses, but had Mr. Punch been dealing with these dear little literary aspirants, he would have simply repeated his world-famed epigrammatic advice to "persons about to marry," and said, most unequivocally, to girls about to write novels—"Don't." Not so Mr. Besant, who proceeds to lay down rules for those "who wish to acquire the art of fiction." He commences with, "Practise writing, something original everyday,"—"Cultivate the habit of observation," and so on, in good old-fashioned copy-book style.

We will assist him with some rules for those to whom Mr. W. Besant gives this advice: "Be bold: never mind ridicule," ... "State fairly, what ordinary people never understand, that Fiction, like Painting, is an Art, and that you are setting yourself to the acquisition of that Art, if it be in your power, whatever may come of it in the end."

Very good. Now here is, as the Cookery books have it, "Another and a shorter way."

To acquire the Art of Fiction.—Clearly understand that Fiction is the opposite of Fact. If you invariably state facts, you become a matter-of-fact sort of person. No Genius is a matter-of-fact sort of person. So to "acquire the Art of Fiction," you must never tell the truth. Practice telling some original lie every day. If it be a description of scenery—well, this offers a large field—several large fields. Give an account to your relatives, or to your friends at a distance of the walk you have taken in the morning. First of all, of course, to be quite perfect, you must not have been out of the house. You will then proceed to describe the roaring Waterfalls over which you leaped, your hairbreadth escapes, &c., &c., and always remember that, as Mr. Besant says, "description is not slavish enumeration."

Rule I.—Tell a lie. Rule II.—Don't stick to it, but tell another, and a bigger one. Pile 'em up, and thus at last you may become an unrivalled Fictionist.

Rule III.—"Work regularly, at certain hours." Ascertain the time the Lark rises, and be up with it. Always be up to time, and to any amount of Larks. Let everybody in the house know you're at work. Sing as the Lark does, and be joyous. Insist on your room being fitted up for work,—at your parents' expense, of course,—with writing-desk, silver inkstand, paper, pens, a library of books, &c., and you must let it be distinctly understood by everyone that you are "not to be disturbed on any account," as you are going in for being a Fictionist.

Rule IV.—"Read no Rubbish," says Mr. Besant. But this is what every author would say, making certain exceptions. But we should say, "Read Everything." Then begin to write. Here is an example: say you read Pickwick. Well, you write a book called Nikpik, a Russian story, plot in St. Petersburg, characters, Nikpik, Kinkel, Grazsnod, and Putmann. You represent a sporting scene where Putmann, with his eyes shut, kills a bird, and afterwards Kinkel wounds Putmann. "Hullo," says the reader, "uncommonly like Pickwick, and writes impetuously and indignantly to papers. Whereupon, you write in reply, saying "it may be so: les grands esprits se rencontrent: but that you have never heard of Pickwick, much less read it." By this time everyone will allow that you are entitled to be regarded as the greatest Fictionist of the age.

Other rules Mr. Besant gives, for which anyone sufficiently interested in detecting the errors of his advice gratis, may search the Atalanta Magazine with considerable profit to himself (or herself) especially if he reads A Christmas Carol, by Christina G. Rossetti, and one tail of Three Lions, by that undefeated Fictionist, Mr. Rider Haggard.

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

Palindromes, by G. R. Clarke, is a series of cruelly ingenious verbal cranks—"cranks" seems to be the word, since they are neither quips, quirks, puns, nor jests, consisting of sentences so arranged that, read backwards or forwards, they are precisely the same. An example of this is, "Was it a rat I saw?" The illustrations are comically amateurish, and amateurishly comic, but one of the best, "Selim smiles," is rather in the early Thackerayan style of pictorial art. The palindromical amusement will probably develop itself, as the acrostic family has done, and we shall soon be reading in "Answers to Correspondents" that their puzzle is referred to in "The Palindromical Editor." The little book is published, as any experienced joker in Scotland might have guessed, by Messrs. Bryce and Sons, Glasgow, and if you buy it, "Bang goes a shilling."

Approbation from Mr. Punch is praise indeed, and where he has given his favourable opinion of any book, it immediately attracts the public attention, and goes to any number of editions. So has it chanced with Frith's Recollections, which has now reached its third edition; and once Mr. Punch spoke well of the Jubilee Edition of Pickwick, which has now been re-issued with some of the original sketches by "Buss,"—to many it will be a surprise that Mr. Pickwick ever took a buss, except under the mistletoe at Dingley Dell,—which are fairly clever, though one of them, the cricketing scene, might have been omitted without damaging the artistic character of the republication. There is a sketch by John Leech, illustrating the moment in the Bagman's Story when the old arm-chair wakes up Tom Smart, and assumes the form and features of a gouty, but wickedly sly, old gentleman, which alone is "worth all the money." It is a real Christmas picture; and indeed a small volume of Tales from Pickwick, illustrated by fanciful and humorous artists, would make a capital Christmas Book of the good old Dickensian sort. Mr. Punch has given the hint: fiat!

By the way, I see an advertisement of a book quoting opinions of the Press as to its