“Have your great minds selected a title for my forthcoming work?”

“Indeed, yes.”

“Then what do you want me to write about?”

The publisher drew from his pocket a paper.

“Here is a wonderful plot,” he replied.  “It has every element—­maudlin sentiment, mystery, touches of your characteristic humor, profound insight—­everything.”

The great author was conservative.  He had had experience.

“I haven’t time to read it just now,” he said.  “But are you sure?  How do you know that it is any good?”

“Good!” exclaimed the publisher.  “Of course it is good.  Why, my dear sir, it has met with the unqualified approval of every member of our motion-picture department.”

THE PUBLISHER—­“How are you going to introduce accurate local color in your new story of life in Thibet?  You’ve never been there.”

THE EMINENT AUTHOR—­“Neither has any of my public.”—­Judge.

“So you got your poem printed?”

“Yes,” replied the author.  “I sent the first stanza to the editor of the Correspondence Column with the inquiry, ’Can anyone give me the rest of this poem?’ Then I sent in the complete poem over another name!”

“Ye think a fine lot of Shakespeare?”

“I do, sir,” was the reply.

“An’ ye think he was mair clever than Rabbie Burns?”

“Why, there’s no comparison between them.”

“Maybe, no; but ye tell us it was Shakespeare who wrote ’Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’  Now, Rabbie would never hae sic nonsense as that.”

“Nonsense, sir!” thundered the other.

“Ay, just nonsense.  Rabbie would hae kent fine that a king or queen either disna ganga to bed wi’ a croon on their head.  He’d hae kent they hang it over the back o’ a chair.”

HOSTESS—­“I sometimes wonder, Mr. Highbrow, if there is anything vainer than you authors about the things you write.”

HIGHBROW—­“There is, madam; our efforts to sell them.”

“No,” said the honest man, “I was never strong at literature.  To save my life I could not tell you who wrote ‘Gray’s Elegy.’”

HENLEY—­“How are you getting on with your writing for the magazines?”

PENLEY—­“Just holding my own.  They send me back as much as I send them.”

Wouldn’t it be pleasant if so many authors didn’t: 

Let their characters converse for hours without any identification tags, so that you have to turn back three pages and number off odd speeches in order to find out who’s talking.

Overwork the “smart” atmosphere, the suspension points and the seasonal epidemics of such words as “gripping,” “virile,” “intrigue,” “gesture,” etc.

Stick up a periscope every now and then, like, “Little did he think how dearly this trifling error was to cost him,” or “She was to meet this man again, under strange circumstances.”

Apply a large hunk of propaganda, like an ice bag, just where the plot ought to rush ahead.