day-dreams. I used to entertain myself in this way constantly when a schoolboy. In walking home from school I would take up the thread of a plot and carry it on from day to day until the thing became a serial story. The habit was continued for years, simply because I enjoyed it—especially when walking. If anybody had known or asked me about it I should have confessed that I thought it a dreadful waste of time.

Guest. But it proved, I dare say, a sort of peripatetic training-school of fiction.

Host. Perhaps it might be called so. At any rate, years after, I used to go back to these stories for motives, especially in tales written for children. But there was another way in which, in later years, I have made use of day-dreams. I often woke very early in the morning—too early to think of rising, even if I had been thriftily inclined—and after some experimenting I found that the best way to put myself to sleep again was to construct some regular story.

Guest. (Stockton stories do not have that effect in the experience of readers!)

Host. Some regular story carried through to the end. I would begin a story one morning, continue it the next, and the next, until it ran into the serial. Some of these stories lasted for a long time; one ran through a whole year, I know. I got it all the way from America to Africa.

Guest. Perhaps you anticipated reality. For a friend of mine who reads every book of travels in Africa which she can lay hands on, firmly believes that the Dark Continent will be opened up as a pleasure and health resort for the whole world! But what became of the story?

Host. Well, a long time after, a portion of it came to light again in “The Great War Syndicate.” The idea of “Negative Gravity” was taken from another day-dream, the hero of which invented all sorts of applications of negative gravity, and from these I made a selection for the printed story.

Guest. Delightful—for we may hear from this hero again. I hope he is inexhaustible. How fortunate to have a treasure-house of characters and exploits. You have only to open the door and whatever you want comes out! You don’t have to go to any “Anatomy of Melancholy” or Lemprière, or Old Play, where somebody else is going, too, and will anticipate you—the hard luck of some of the rhyming fraternity!

Host. Of course, some suggestions are wholly involuntary. You do not know how or whence they come. I think of a good illustration of this involuntary action of the mind in conjuring up suggestion for a story. Some time ago, as I was lying in a hammock under the trees, I happened to look up through the branches and saw a great patch of blue sky absolutely clear. I said to myself: “Suppose I saw a little black spot appear in that blue sky.” I kept on thinking. Gradually the idea came of a man who did see such a little spot in the clear sky. And now I am working up this notion in a story I call “As One Woman to Another.”

Guest. You literally had given you less than the conditions given for describing a circle, for you had but a simple point to start with. One might conclude, all that is necessary is to fix upon some central idea, no matter how slight, and then the rest will come, drawn by a kind of mysterious attraction toward the centre.

Host. Ah, but it will not do for the professional writer to depend upon any such luck or chance, for if you wait for suggestions to come from the ether or anywhere else, you may wait in vain. You must begin something. If the mind has been well stored with incident and anecdote, these will furnish useful material, but not the plot. It is often necessary to get one’s self into a proper condition for the reception of impressions, and then to expose the mind, thus prepared, to the influence of the ideal atmosphere. If the proper fancy floats along it is instantly absorbed by the sensitive surface of the mind, where it speedily grows into an available thought, and from that anything can come.

Guest. But with the maker of verse such a resolution sometimes so offends the muse that she turns upon her votary with the most inhuman cruelty. Once I resolved, yes, deliberately resolved, to write some verses about the American Indian—to the effect that he must soon bid good-by and take his place with all broken and departed dynasties of the world—the goal to be some far western region of mournful and dying splendors. The first result of this resolution was rather encouraging. It was:

There inspiration stopped short, limping for lack of half a foot! Each morning, on first waking up, I tried to fill out the line. At last, one morning it was done, presto!—quite taken out of my hands. The result was totally involuntary, I may say.

Host. Well, how did the lines run?

Guest.

Host. Yes, that was cruel! I suppose you could never finish the poem after that. But poets must have to do a great deal more waiting than any other class of literary workers, for they have to wait not only for ideas but for words, which, in poetry, have so much to do with the mechanism of the verse as well as the expression of the idea.

Guest. What the Dii Majores may do, or may have done, I could not presume to say; but with us verse-makers, sometimes it is only the words that do come, at first. The sense, import, and whole motive sometimes arrive much later. This ought to be kept a secret, for it is not to our credit. But I remember once, some one used the phrase, “For the time being.” It was immediately invested with a subtle extra value which seemed left to me to discover and define. Any maker of verse, I should guess, would in the same way be followed up continually by refrains and catch-words—the mere gossip of Parnassus, one might say. You have the fragments of a puzzle; they are scattered; some are missing. They must be hunted up and fitted together. Sometimes the last will be first and the first will be last, when the metrical whole is completed. For example of how detached and meaningless these first suggestions may be, take this line and a half:

It was months after this suggestion came to me that I found the context and motive of the verse. I had to wait for the rest, and take whatever came.

A CORNER OF THE DRAWING-ROOM.

Host. This subject of suggestions, and how they come, is an interesting one. It reminds me of what the astronomers tell us of certain methods they employ. For instance, they expose, by means of telescopic action, a sensitive photographic plate to the action of light from portions of the heavens where nothing is seen. After a long exposure they look at the plate, and something may be seen that was never seen before—star, nebulæ, or perhaps a comet—something which the telescope will not reveal to the eye. As an instance of my use of this exposure plan I will mention