nd arrest. I milled around the question
of his identification as Illinois and Indiana went past the Pullman
window; and then the one sure and unfailing witness for that purpose
volunteered--the express messenger himself. There was no reason why
this young man shouldn't be a native of Bowling Green, and come home
from St. Louis at the end of certain runs. He would know Goodwin and
the blacksmith's family; but, to put him nearer to them, more "into
the story" sentimentally, I gave Goodwin a little sister, and made the
messenger her accepted lover, with his arrest and detention postponing
the wedding. This need to free his sister's fiance gave the sheriff
hero a third reason for getting the real robber; the other two being
his official duty and the rivalry for Kate. The messenger and the
sheriff's sister, the helper and the comedy daughter, and Goodwin and
Kate, made three pairs of young lovers. This number might easily
lead to a disastrous diffusion of interest unless the playwright were
careful always to make the work of each couple, even when apparently
about their own personal affairs, really to the forward trend of the
story.

I doubt if the production of novels, even to the writer
temperamentally disposed to that form of expression, is as absorbing
as play-making. The difference between the novel and the play is the
difference between _was_ and _is_. Something has _happened_ for the
writer of the novel and for his people. He describes it as it was; and
them as they were. In the play something _is happening_. Its form is
controversial--and the playwright, by force of this controversy, is
in turn each one of his characters, and not merely a witness of their
doings. When they begin to take hold of him, their possession is more
and more insistent--all interests in real life become more and more
secondary and remote until the questions in dispute are not only
decided, but there is also a written record of the debates and the
decision.

By the time our train pulled into New York, I was impatient to make a
running transcript of speeches of my contending people. But that is
a relief that must be deferred. Like over-anxious litigants, the
characters are disposed to talk too much, and must be controlled
and kept in bounds by a proportioned scenario, assigning order, and
respective and progressive values to them. That was the work of a day
by that time, and then, with the material gathered, and the intimacy
with the people a