Fiction Writing Valuable to the Photoplaywright_

Let us consider the case of a man born with a talent and love for
music. As he grows up, he learns to play upon the violin--learns as
hundreds have done, by first taking up the most simple exercises and
constantly working up until he becomes more proficient. As in all
other occupations, practice eventually brings skill, and he at last
becomes a master of the violin. He may have been born a genius--it has
always been in him to become the exceptional performer upon the
instrument of his choice. Nevertheless, the hard work was necessary,
as that maker of epigrams saw when he said that genius was an infinite
capacity for taking pains.

To carry the simple illustration a step further: geniuses are few, so
it is certain that our artist has become a master of the violin
because he is a man who, loving his work and putting his whole soul
into it, daily improved in technique and quality by intelligent labor.
If he is a concert performer, he feels his art becoming more perfect
with each new recital. He has learned _how_ to play, and now there
remains nothing but the necessity for keeping constantly--note the
expressive phrase--in practice, and improving the quality and style of
his playing.

Let us suppose, now, that this musical artist is offered an
exceptionally good salary to appear in vaudeville with another
musician, who performs equally well upon two or three, or even more,
very different instruments. He accepts the offer; he and his partner
"open" in the act; and, after a week or two, in order to "build up"
the act as well as to become capable of playing another kind of
instrument, he decides to take up the study of the cornet. The violin
and cornet are, of course, widely different in construction, and they
produce very different effects. Besides, the methods of producing
those effects are totally unlike, since one is drawn from the violin
with the aid of trained hands and fingers, while the other is produced
by the skillful operation of the human lips, tongue and lungs, with
only minor assistance from the fingers. Yet the tones of these two
instruments may be equally harmonious and pleasing when each is
skillfully played. So, in the course of time, the violinist becomes
almost, if not quite, as accomplished a player upon the cornet as he
is upon the instrument whose study first engrossed him.

And now a question--one which certainly should not admit of much
differenc