teresting; and if the result of it be written
down, the young author will gain experience in expression at the same
time that he is developing his sense of narrative.

=The Meaning of the Word "Event."=--It remains for us now to consider
philosophically the significance of the word _event_. Every event has
three elements: the thing that is done, the agents that do it, and the
circumstances of time and place under which it is done; or, to say the
matter in three words,--action, actors, and setting. Only when all
three elements conspire can something happen. Life suggests to the
mind of a contemplative observer many possible events which remain
unrealized because only one or two of the necessary three elements are
present,--events that are waiting, like unborn children on the other
side of Lethe, until the necessary conditions shall call them into
being. We observe a man who could do a great thing of a certain sort
if only that sort of thing were demanded to be done at the time and in
the place in which he loiters wasted. We grow aware of a great thing
longing to be done, when there is no one present who is capable of
doing it. We behold conditions of place and time entirely fitted for a
certain sort of happening; but nothing happens, because the necessary
people are away. "Never the time and the place and the loved one all
together!" sang Robert Browning; and then he dreamed upon an event
which was waiting to be born,--waiting for the imagined meeting and
marriage of its elements.

=How to Make Things Happen.=--It is the function of the master of
creative narrative to call events into being. He does this by
assembling and marrying the elements without which events cannot
occur. Granted the conception of a character who is capable of doing
certain things, he finds things of that sort for the character to do;
granted a sense of certain things longing to be done, he finds people
who will do them; or granted the time and the place that seem
expectant of a certain sort of happening, he finds the agents proper
to the setting. There is a conversation of Stevenson's, covering this
point, which has been often quoted. His biographer, Mr. Graham
Balfour, tells us: "Either on that day or about that time I remember
very distinctly his saying to me: 'There are, so far as I know, three
ways, and three ways only, of writing a story. You may take a plot and
fit characters to it, or you may take a character and choose incidents
and situ