ed by a man and a young lady:
their purpose was manifest, they were a runaway couple, bound for Gretna
Green. They had not travelled long together before the young lady,
turning to the squire, said, "_Vous parlez francais, Monsieur_?" He did
speak French--it was plain that the bridegroom did not--and, to the end
of the journey, that remarkable lady conducted a lively and affectionate
conversation with the squire in French! Manifestly, he had only to ask
and receive, but, alas! he was an unadventurous, plain gentleman; he
alighted at his own village; he drove home in his own dogcart; the
fugitive pair went forward, and the Gretna blacksmith united them in holy
matrimony. The rest is silence.

I would give much to know what that young person's previous history and
adventures had been, to learn what befell her after her wedding, to
understand, in brief, her conduct and her motives. Were I a novelist, a
Maupassant, or a Meredith, the Muse, "from whatsoever quarter she chose,"
would enlighten me about all, and I would enlighten you. But I can only
marvel, only throw out the hint, only deposit the grain of sand, the
nucleus of romance, in some more fertile brain. Indeed the topic is much
more puzzling than the right conclusion for my Highland romance. In that
case fancy could find certain obvious channels, into one or other of
which it must flow. But I see no channels for the lives of these three
queerly met people in the coach.

As a rule, fancies are capable of being arranged in but a few familiar
patterns, so that it seems hardly worth while to make the arrangement.
But he who looks at things thus will never be a writer of stories. Nay,
even of the slowly unfolding tale of his own existence he may weary, for
the combinations therein have all occurred before; it is in a hackneyed
old story that he is living, and you, and I. Yet to act on this
knowledge is to make a bad affair of our little life: we must try our
best to take it seriously. And so of story-writing. As Mr. Stevenson
says, a man must view "his very trifling enterprise with a gravity that
would befit the cares of empire, and think the smallest improvement worth
accomplishing at any expense of time and industry. The book, the statue,
the sonata, must be gone upon with the unreasoning good faith and the
unflagging spirit of children at their play."

That is true, that is the worst of it. The man, the writer, over whom
the irresistible desire to moc