in their ways, and well conducted. His is a humor
which flows softly all around about and over and through the mesh of the
page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes no more show and
no more noise than does the circulation of the blood.

There is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in Mr. Howells's
books. That is his "stage directions"--those artifices which authors
employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene and a
conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings in
the other which might not be perceived if entrusted unexplained to the
bare words of the talk. Some authors overdo the stage directions, they
elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and
take up so much room in telling us how a person said a thing and how he
looked and acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish he
hadn't said it all. Other authors' directions are brief enough, but it
is seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information. Writers
of this school go in rags, in the matter of state directions; the
majority of them having nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a blush,
and a bursting into tears. In their poverty they work these sorry things
to the bone. They say:

"... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar." (This explains
nothing; it only wastes space.)

"... responded Richard, with a laugh." (There was nothing to laugh
about; there never is. The writer puts it in from habit--automatically;
he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is
nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly
flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage
direction and making Richard break into "frenzies of uncontrollable
laughter." This makes the reader sad.)

"... murmured Gladys, blushing." (This poor old shop-worn blush is a
tiresome thing. We get so we would rather Gladys would fall out of the
book and break her neck than do it again. She is always doing it, and
usually irrelevantly. Whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out
her blush; it is the only thing she's got. In a little while we hate
her, just as we do Richard.)

"... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears." (This kind keep a book damp
all the time. They can't say a thing without crying. They cry so much
about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry ABOUT they
have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we