presses continue to send forth, it was my good fortune to discover the law which governs what I might style, availing myself again of technical language, the ebb and flow of novel tides. We are now, as you are no doubt aware, at the flood-tide of the Romance of the American Revolution, that unhappy difference which separated us from our mother country. After this brilliant discovery I pursued my researches into still more erudite fields, and by the expenditure of much labor it was my supreme and crowning happiness to have devised a method by which anyone possessing the rudimentary principles of a common school education, may take the prevailing tide of novel production at the flood and be swept triumphantly into the haven of success. You will permit me, my dear young friend, to indulge in some pardonable enthusiasm over my successful achievement.

Now, you have been good enough to let me so far into the secrets of your ambition as to confess you would fain write a Romance. Go back then fifty years to the last flood-tide. Take Thackeray's Virginians. First, omit all parentheses and addresses to dear readers or dear madam. Such addresses are mere local or temporary peculiarities, a slight tincture of foreign substances in the sea water, to sustain the metaphor. Next, remove every trait from the characters but one. This operation will relieve you of much embarrassment in the manipulation of the dramatis persona. Be careful to retain all literary or other celebrities, and never hesitate to send one of your characters any distance

for any length of time, provided some famous historical personage may be introduced. Now go over the work carefully, and wherever Virginia occurs insert some other colony. Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and New York have already been taken. There is no place for a Romance in New England. I advise you, therefore, to take one of the Carolinas. This change of colony is essential; this is the one, nay the unique, source of originality in my method. Don't mind about the scenery. Nobody reads that, and the Revolution is now a very remote event. England of course will be just the same, and your hero, and if possible the heroine also, must carry London by storm. A few of my friends, to whom I have communicated my discovery, have advised some minor changes, such as making uncles of aunts and so forth. However, very successful products of this system have been seen by me with very few such changes. Another suggestion has been made, and, as it comes to us recommended by the practice of antiquity, it receives my unqualified approval. It is proposed, therefore, that Cooper's Spy (The Pilot can also be used to advantage) be subjected to the process described above and deftly dovetailed to the pruned Virginians. Mayhap you have read that Virgil put this suggestion into practice, dovetailing the Iliad and Odyssey when composing his incomparable epic.

In accordance with what I must look on as your command, and in complete accordance with my own impulses, I have here fully divulged my

method of novel production. After I had penned the above, THE PURPLE for January came to hand; and in the scientific presentation of facts and in the keen insight into far-reaching principles, as displayed in the letter to young writers of fiction, the genius of an old friend and associate in abstruse pursuits stands revealed. If you ever have the great happiness of making his acquaintance, prevail upon him to allow you to read his erudite monograph, "The Evolution of Humor; or, All Witticisms Reduced to One Formula." It may be permitted me to say in closing that my learned friend's method of writing novels is synthetic, mine is analytic, or more strictly synthetico-analytic. Equipped with two such adequate methods, you encourage me to hope for unexampled results from what I know will be unstinted efforts on your part."

I was quite dazed, dear Mr. Q., when I read this delightful letter. It is grand, don't you You won't put this in

think so? I know I do.

THE PURPLE, will you, please? friendship,

Yours in literary JANICE MEREdith.

P. S. My heroine has already promised to marry ten men. Three of these are villains. The real Janice Meredith, you know, said "yes" to three men and almost said it to three more, and I am determined not to be beaten. Mr. Q., how often on a page should a trooper swear? If I leave blanks, will you fill in with the proper oaths. I like "zooks" and "sdeath." J. M.

TENUIS AVENA.

THE RAID.

Just a little stable,

Of trotters fleet and rare.

Just a raider sable.

Just a little stable

Without its steeds so able

Their owner's load to bear.

Just a little stable

Of trotters fleet and rare.

R., 'oi.

THE BELL IN THE TOWER.

When you ring out your dreaded sound
And wake us from our happy dreams,
Then proper words can scarce be found,
When you ring out your dreaded sound,
To tell our feelings quite profound.

We scarce have gone to sleep, it seems,
When you ring out your dreaded sound
And wake us from our happy dreams.

M., 'or.

MY PONY.

As o'er the classic plains I rush,

In "bounds of graceful hardihood," The Gordian knots of Greek-but hush! (As o'er the classic plains I rush). Bucephalus, my steed,—I blush—

Stops not for tenses, voice or mood,

As o'er the classic plains I rush

“In bounds of graceful hardihood.”

D., 'oi.

IN MEMORIAM Duperron, alias DUBOIS, alias LAWRENCE.

I sometimes hold it half a sin,

To give to every man mine ear

For stories false, of "Indians dear,"

Will surely come to me therein.

But, for the simple heart and brain,
The bishop tells his wonder tales,
And not of life in county jails,
Where he for three long years had lain.

In oily words he'll talk to you

Of Esquimaux and "one banan'."
And yet, and yet, a clever man
Is Duperron, the Russian Jew.

R., '02.