“Pray, Sir,” a leader-writer is said to have asked Delane, “how do you say ‘good fellow’ in print?” and to have been answered, “Sir, you should not say it at all.” There are thousands of ambitious young people to-day who want to know how you say good fellow, or awful snipe, or old bean, or whatever, in print, and that is why there are Schools of Journalism. A paper of instructions from one of these excellent institutions has lately fallen into my hands, and there seems no reason for withholding it from publication. It appears to be in the nature of a preliminary introduction to what a distinguished journalist has well called “practical literature.” For Journalists, in Matthew Arnold’s quotation, drive at practice, and to be practical you must begin by learning the shibboleths—that is to say, the turns of phrase and modes of treatment that long experience has approved and constant readers are accustomed to expect. There is no mystery about it; they are much more simple than a vain people supposeth. But it is all-important to get them right at the outset—or, as is said in practical literature, from the word “go”—and the advice the paper has to give about them is as follows:— _Descriptive Articles on Great Occasions._—The beginner will probably find there is very little to describe. He must learn to invent. Street crowds have a pestilent habit of not cheering at the appropriate moment; your first business will be to make them. Celebrities flash by in closed carriages, totally hidden by the police; you will ruthlessly expose them, bowing to the storm of applause which sweeps across the multitude filling the square and lining the classic steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. If the Royal Family is present you will need especial tact. Find the golden mean between the familiar and the abject. Be human, like Euripides. Above all, the homely “note” is recommended. You cannot say too often that the King “looked bronzed.” Thousands of pallid readers who go to Margate for a week in order to come back looking bronzed will appreciate that. It is loyal, it attests that robust health that we all desire for his Majesty, and at the same time it is homely. “I, too, have been bronzed,” the reader says, as the barber at Byron’s funeral said, “I, too, have been unhappy.” Whatever is offered the Queen, a bouquet, a trowel, a sample of the local product the Queen will “smilingly accept.” If she tastes the men’s (or boy scouts’ or factory girls’) soup, she will “pronounce it excellent.” Preserve a cheerful tone, especially with _contretemps_. If Gold Stick in Waiting drops his gold stick, you will note that “the Royal party were highly amused” and that “the little Princess laughed heartily.”