8. Use of Material.-Selection must follow collection. What to say is the first question. What not to say is the second. The subject, with the chosen limitations, should be kept in mind always, and whatever does not bear clearly or directly upon it should be steadfastly rejected, unless, indeed, the composition is of the most informal kind and the writer is deliberately giving the reins to his fancy. If "A Summer in the Country" be the subject, clearly promising a narrative sketch, one half of the article should not be given over to general remarks upon what country life in summer means. If Grasmere Lake be the subject, it would be a mistake to speak more than incidentally of Wordsworth and his work, because the fugitive life of a man can play but a small part in the history of more permanent objects in nature. Grasmere Lake would remain what it is even if Wordsworth had never been, although undoubtedly he contributed much to our interest in it. But if Wordsworth be the centre of interest, then Wordsworth should be our theme. And with that theme given it is quite conceivable that Grasmere Lake should figure largely in our composition, for the objects and aspects of nature do have a direct and deep influence on the lives of men.

Much, however, that is admissible on grounds of logic is not admissible on grounds of expediency. The purpose of the composition should be allowed due influence in this matter. When the purpose is instruction, as in a scientific treatise, everything may be included that is necessary to make the treatise exhaustive. But when the purpose is entertainment, as in most literature, much must be merely suggested and much must be rejected altogether, for "the art of boring people is to tell everything." In a general essay on the prune industry it would be unnecessary and out of place to say that two fivepenny nails are driven

through each end of each shake in the manufacture of drying-trays. But in an article for an orchardists' journal on the home-drying of prunes, especially if the article is to be accompanied with illustrative diagrams, these details would be wholly appropriate. The readers must be considered, too, and the manner in which they are meant to be affected. A fact drawn from sacred history bears to most men a different import from a fact drawn from profane history. Cotton Mather could carry conviction to his Puritan readers by invoking the names of Polyander and Festus Hommius, "those famous divines"; we can scarcely find out to-day who Polyander and Festus Hommius were. With most modern readers a quotation from Plato would not carry so much weight as a quotation from Gladstone, while with some readers a quotation from a demagogue of local renown would have more weight than either. No writer can afford to ignore his audience.

Again, the length of the composition, which should be approximately determined beforehand, must settle many questions as to admission or exclusion of details. Sometimes a particular matter will bear expansion and there is space for it. We allow details to swarm in. Fact supports fact, and opinion supports opinion. Illustrations of all kinds are welcome. A general truth is supported by our own experience; a surprising incident finds explanation in the working of some hidden law. More often, however, we must compress the material we have gathered into smaller compass. It is well, too, that it is so, for condensation is a safer process than expansion. But this whole matter is one that ultimately concerns proportion, and the discussion of it will come up again when we reach that point.

Unquestionably one of the secrets of good writing is to become first of all so full of your subject that you need to give to the

reader only a tithe of what you possess. Writer and reader alike have more confidence when they know there is plenty of ammunition in reserve. The historian in particular must go through vast quantities of material which he will not use at all or which he will use only in the most abridged form.

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It will be profitable in this connection to examine again Macaulay's practice. 'Take at hazard any three pages of the 'Essays' or 'History,'" says Thackeray, "and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Your neighbor, who has his reading and his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description." Let us try this more closely. In the third chapter of the "History" are these sentences: "The rising importance of Leeds had attracted the notice of successive governments. Charles the First had granted municipal privileges to the town. Oliver had invited it to send one member to the House of Commons. But from the returns of the hearth-money it seems certain that the whole population of the borough, an extensive district which contains many hamlets, did not, in the reign of Charles the Second, exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841 there were more than a hundred and fifty thousand." Trevelyan, in order to give us an insight into the way in which Macaulay arrived at one of these facts, prints two of his letters:

July 17, 1848.

Pray let Dr.

DEAR ELLIS,-Many thanks for your kindness. Hook know, whenever you have an opportunity, how much I am obliged to him. The information which he has procured for me, I am sorry to say, is not such as I can use. But you need not tell him so. I feel convinced that he has made some mistake: for he sends me only a part of the Leeds burials in 1685; and yet the number is double that of the Manchester burials in the same year. If the ordinary rules of calculation are applied to these data, it will be found that Leeds must in 1685 have contained 16,000 souls

or thereabouts. Now, at the beginning of the American war Leeds contained only 16,000 souls, as appears from Dr. Hook's own letter. Nobody can suppose that there had been no increase between 1685 and 1775. Besides, neither York nor Exeter contained 16,000 inhabitants in 1685, and nobody who knows the state of things at that time can believe that Leeds was then a greater town than York or Exeter. Either some error has been committed or else there was an extraordinary mortality at Leeds in 1685. In either case the numbers are useless for my purpose. Ever yours, T. B. M.

July 27, 1848.

He gives a

DEAR ELLIS,-Many thanks. Wardell is the man. much better thing than a list of burials—a list of the houses returned by the hearth-money collectors. It appears that Leeds contained, in 1663, just 1400 houses. And observe, all the townships are included. The average number of people to a house in a country town was, according to the best statistical writers of the seventeenth century, 4.3. If that estimate be just, Leeds must, in 1663, have contained about 6000 souls. As it increased in trade and wealth during the reign of Charles II., we may well suppose that in 1685 the population was near 8000—that is to say, about as much as the population of Manchester. I had expected this result from observing that by the writers of that time Manchester and Leeds are always mentioned as of about the same size. But this evidence proves to demonstration either that there was some mistake about the number of burials or that the year 1685 was a singularly unhealthy year, from which no inference can be drawn. One person must have died in every third house within twelve months--a rate of mortality quite frightful.

Trevelyan's comment is to the point: "It must be remembered that these letters represent only a part of the trouble which Macaulay underwent in order to insure the correctness of five and a half lines of print. . . . Any one who will turn to the description of the town of Leeds, and will read the six paragraphs that precede it and the three that follow it [descriptive of other towns], may form a conception of the pains which those clear and flowing periods must have cost an author who expended

on the pointing of a phrase as much conscientious research as would have provided some writers who speak of Macaulay as showy and shallow with at least half a dozen pages of ostentatious statistics."

The good effect of dispensing with all superfluous explanations in composition that is intended to be entertaining may be marked in the following extract from a story:

The street-lamps winked and twinkled in the warm spring rain. In the shadows the pavements shone like great blocks of polished black marble. The roar of the city was hushed and subdued. The very air breathed of green grasses and flowers. The crowd, their black umbrellas powdered with sparkling brilliants, surged back and forth, gazing into shop windows, gaping at passing carriages, and jostling each other from side to side with rare good nature. All were happy; all were smiling; spring had come— spring with its fragrance and flowers, spring with its bright sunshine and warm rains.

"Violets?" pleaded the black-eyed vender. "All of them! No; I can't carry so many." But Carrington filled his arms from the boy's basket and then hailed a passing cab.

"She likes violets," he murmured; "so do I"-burying his face in the fragrant blossoms.

"No. 2938," said the driver, throwing open the cab door. Carrington ran up the stairs and was admitted without delay. "Tuberoses!" he exclaimed disdainfully; "time for tuberoses when one is dead. I have brought you some violets. Throw the others away."

"Will ! "

He had opened the window. Some street gamins were slipping and scrambling over the pavement-scrambling for the pure white blossoms.

"There is life in violets," he apologized.

Or for swiftness of narration secured by similar ellipsis take the following two lines, also from a short story: "O girls, I know an ideal spot!"

It was ideal.