" Saying nothing more, he
was encouraged to continue. "That," he said, "is the story."
ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as
They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to
probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance
it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination -- free,
lawless, immune to bit and rein. Your novelist is a poor creature, as
Carlyle might say -- a mere reporter. He may invent his characters
and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not
occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie. Why he imposes
this hard condition on himself, and "drags at each remove a
lengthening chain" of his own forging he can explain in ten thick
volumes without illuminating by so much as a candle's ray the black
profound of his own ignorance of the matter. There are great novels,
for great writers have "laid waste their powers" to write them, but it
remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction that we
have is "The Thousand and One Nights."
ROPE, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they
too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place one's
whole life long. It has been largely superseded by a more complex
electrical device worn upon another part of the person; and this is
rapidly giving place to an apparatus known as the preachment.
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