This being so, I revolve in my mind the different methods which could be applied to the task. First of all, there is the method to which I have already alluded, and in some cases used in these notes: the method of not writing about America at all, but about something else. You would begin writing like this: “The day I arrived at San Francisco, I was thinking about Venice,” and then you would write a chapter on Venice. But I do not think people would stand this. Then you could use the manner of Bernard Shaw. You could write a “discussion” on America in three acts, in which an aeronaut, a milliner, a Salvation Army girl, a capitalist, a High-Church clergyman, and a lady Socialist would sit round a table and discuss America. You would begin with a preface on trusts, Italian opera, vivisection, submarines, and prizefighting. Then you would get to the discussion. This would be prefaced by five pages of stage-directions, with regard to the room in which the discussion was to take place. Then one of the characters would enter, and there would be two pages of stage-directions in very small print about the facial expression, the clothes, the boots, the watch, the cigarette-case of that character. Then the character would do a little business,--open the window, perhaps, or shut it. More characters would enter, heralded by more stage-directions. Then the characters, having sat down, would discuss America, and incidentally every other country under the sun, especially England. The discussion would be forbidden by the censorship in England, because one of the characters would be called Askfour, and this would be considered allusion to (_a_) Mr. Asquith (_b_) Mr. Balfour (_c_) Sir George Askwith (on account of the “k”);-- and so the discussion would be acted in the Little Theatre at New York, and in London by the State Society on Sunday evenings. Then I might adopt the method of Pierre Loti. This is called the “dot-and-dash” method. It is like the Morse code made poetic. You begin a sentence and leave it unfinished, adding a lot of dots like this:-- New York............. I am in New York-.-...but I am not thinking of New York..-....-I am thinking of something else....-..the other places....... the East ......the desert........Stamboul............... Ispahan........Sadi...... (Then a whole line of dots.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . (Then you begin again.) I am in New York............. tall buildings rise wistful and white in the pale milky sky...... They are very tall, those buildings........ They affect me with a strange longing to go away....... to be somewhere else...... anywhere else........ not here....There........ where?...... Beyond....... Translate that into French, and you get the Loti-Morse method. [Illustration: VERY FEW WRITERS THINK WHEN THEY ARE WRITING]