shouting a derisive farewell, turned to pursue my way.
In so doing--it was like going suddenly into cold water--I
found myself face to face with a prim, little old maid. She
was all in a flutter, the poor old dear! She had concluded
beyond question that this must be a lunatic who stood
laughing aloud at a white donkey in the placid beech-woods.
I was sure, by her face, that she had already recommended
her spirit most religiously to Heaven, and prepared herself
for the worst. And so, to reassure her, I uncovered and
besought her, after a very staid fashion, to put me on my
way to Great Missenden. Her voice trembled a little, to be
sure, but I think her mind was set at rest; and she told me,
very explicitly, to follow the path until I came to the end
of the wood, and then I should see the village below me in
the bottom of the valley. And, with mutual courtesies, the
little old maid and I went on our respective ways."

Books of travel, memoirs, and biographies, as whole books, are
generally without any arrangement serious enough to be termed a plot;
yet a large part of the interest in such books would be lost were the
incidents there collected not well told, with a conscious attempt to
set them out in the very best fashion; indeed, if each incident did
not have a plot. In "Vanity Fair" with its six hundred pages, in
"Silas Marner" with its two hundred pages, in the short stories of our
best magazines, in the spicy little anecdotes in the "Youth's
Companion,"--in the least bit of a good story as well as the
three-volume novel, the authors have used the means best suited to
retain the interest to the end. They have constructed plots.

Unity, Mass, and Coherence.

In the construction of any piece of composition there are three
principles of primary importance: they are Unity, which is concerned
with the material itself; and Mass and Coherence, which are concerned
with the arrangement of the material. A composition has unity when all
the material has been so sifted and selected that each part
contributes its share to the central thought of the whole. Whether of
a sentence, a paragraph, or a whole composition, all those parts must
be excluded which do not bring something of value to the whole; and
everything must be included which is necessary to give a clear
understanding of the whole. Mass, the second principle of structure,
demands that those p