“That I certainly will, Mr. Blackwood,” said I.

“Good!” he replied.  “I see you are a pupil after my own heart.  But I must put you au fait to the details necessary in composing what may be denominated a genuine Blackwood article of the sensation stamp —­ the kind which you will understand me to say I consider the best for all purposes.

“The first thing requisite is to get yourself into such a scrape as no one ever got into before.  The oven, for instance, —­ that was a good hit.  But if you have no oven or big bell, at hand, and if you cannot conveniently tumble out of a balloon, or be swallowed up in an earthquake, or get stuck fast in a chimney, you will have to be contented with simply imagining some similar misadventure.  I should prefer, however, that you have the actual fact to bear you out.  Nothing so well assists the fancy, as an experimental knowledge of the matter in hand.  ‘Truth is strange,’ you know, ’stranger than fiction’ —­ besides being more to the purpose.”

Here I assured him I had an excellent pair of garters, and would go and hang myself forthwith.

“Good!” he replied, “do so; —­ although hanging is somewhat hacknied.  Perhaps you might do better.  Take a dose of Brandreth’s pills, and then give us your sensations.  However, my instructions will apply equally well to any variety of misadventure, and in your way home you may easily get knocked in the head, or run over by an omnibus, or bitten by a mad dog, or drowned in a gutter.  But to proceed.

“Having determined upon your subject, you must next consider the tone, or manner, of your narration.  There is the tone didactic, the tone enthusiastic, the tone natural —­ all common —­ place enough.  But then there is the tone laconic, or curt, which has lately come much into use.  It consists in short sentences.  Somehow thus:  Can’t be too brief.  Can’t be too snappish.  Always a full stop.  And never a paragraph.

“Then there is the tone elevated, diffusive, and interjectional.  Some of our best novelists patronize this tone.  The words must be all in a whirl, like a humming-top, and make a noise very similar, which answers remarkably well instead of meaning.  This is the best of all possible styles where the writer is in too great a hurry to think.

“The tone metaphysical is also a good one.  If you know any big words this is your chance for them.  Talk of the Ionic and Eleatic schools —­ of Archytas, Gorgias, and Alcmaeon.  Say something about objectivity and subjectivity.  Be sure and abuse a man named Locke.  Turn up your nose at things in general, and when you let slip any thing a little too absurd, you need not be at the trouble of scratching it out, but just add a footnote and say that you are indebted for the above profound observation to the ’Kritik der reinem Vernunft,’ or to the ’Metaphysithe Anfongsgrunde der Noturwissenchaft.’  This would look erudite and —­ and —­ and frank.