on't, on
looking at it, like the title. Here are a few that have occurred to me.

"The Steel Casket."

"The Lost Manuscript."

"Derval Court."

"Perpetual Youth."

"Maggie."

"Dr. Fenwick."

"Life and Death."

The four last I think the best. There is an objection to "Dr. Fenwick"
because there has been "Dr. Antonio," and there is a book of Dumas'
which repeats the objection. I don't think "Fenwick" startling enough.
It appears to me that a more startling title would take the (John) Bull
by the horns, and would be a serviceable concession to your misgiving,
as suggesting a story off the stones of the gas-lighted Brentford Road.

The title is the first thing to be settled, and cannot be settled too
soon.

For the purposes of the weekly publication the divisions of the story
will often have to be greatly changed, though afterwards, in the
complete book, you can, of course, divide it into chapters, free from
that reference. For example: I would end the first chapter on the third
slip at "and through the ghostly streets, under the ghostly moon, went
back to my solitary room." The rest of what is now your first chapter
might be made Chapter II., and would end the first weekly part.

I think I have become, by dint of necessity and practice, rather cunning
in this regard; and perhaps you would not mind my looking closely to
such points from week to week. It so happens that if you had written the
opening of this story expressly for the occasion its striking incidents
could not possibly have followed one another better. One other merely
mechanical change I suggest now. I would not have an initial letter for
the town, but would state in the beginning that I gave the town a
fictitious name. I suppose a blank or a dash rather fends a good many
people off--because it always has that effect upon me.

Be sure that I am perfectly frank and open in all I have said in this
note, and that I have not a grain of reservation in my mind. I think the
story a very fine one, one that no other man could write, and that there
is no strength in your misgiving for the two reasons: firstly, that the
work is professedly a work of Fancy and Fiction, in which the reader is
not required against his will to take everything for Fact; secondly,
that it is written by the man who can write it. The Magician's servant
does not know what to do with the ghost, and has, consequently, no
business with him. The Magician does know what to do with him,