4th. His adventures should be horrible; but no kind of moral should be drawn from them, unless it be desired to exalt the patriotism of the reader. 5th. Every short story should be divided by a “Cæsura”: that is, it should break off sharp in the middle, and you have then the choice of three distinct courses: (_a_). To stop altogether--as is often done by people who die, and whose remains are published. (_b_). To go on with a totally different subject. This method is not to be commended to the beginner. It is common to rich or popular writers; and even they have commonly the decency to put in asterisks. (_c_). To go on with your story where it left off, as I have done in the model which follows. That model was constructed especially with the view to guide the beginner. Its hero is a fellow subject, white--indeed, an Englishman. The scene is laid in water, not perhaps salt, but at least brackish. The adventure preys upon the mind. The moral is doubtful: the Cæsura marked and obvious. Moreover, it begins in the middle, which (as I omitted to state above) is the very hall-mark of the Vivid Manner. THE ACCIDENT TO MR. THORPE. When Mr. Thorpe, drysalter, of St. Mary Axe, E.C., fell into the water, it was the opinion of those who knew him best that he would be drowned. I say “those who knew him best” because, in the crowd that immediately gathered upon the embankment, there were present not a few of his friends. They had been walking home together on this fine evening along the river side, and now that Mr. Thorpe was in such peril, not one could be got to do more than lean upon the parapet shouting for the police, though they should have known how useless was that body of men in any other than its native element. Alas! how frail a thing is human friendship, and how terribly does misfortune bring it to the test. How had Mr. Thorpe fallen into the water? I am not surprised at your asking that question. It argues a very observant, critical, and accurate mind; a love of truth; a habit of weighing evidence; and altogether a robust, sturdy, practical, Anglo-Saxon kind of an attitude, that does you credit. You will not take things on hearsay, and there is no monkish credulity about you. I congratulate you. You say (and rightly) that Honest Merchants do not fall into the Thames for nothing, the thing is unusual; you want (very properly) to know how it happened, or, as you call it, “occurred.” I cannot tell you. I was not there at the time. All I know is, that he did fall in, and that, as matter of plain fact (and you are there to judge fact, remember, not law), Mr. Thorpe was at 6.15 in the evening of June 7th, 1892, floundering about in the water a little above Cleopatra’s Needle; and there are a cloud of witnesses.