The kind of story I am always longing to have for my magazine must have in it characters that affect me as human beings would, characters that are true to their inheritance and environment, who react honestly and sincerely to their training and surroundings. Write about any type of man, woman or child that you choose, but make them true to type, or rather true to character. For instance, the longshoreman must not only _talk_, but _think_ and _feel_ like a longshoreman. It seems important to me that the soubrette should not react to life as a bishop would, and that the philosophy of a returned soldier should vary somewhat from that of an elderly spinster of New England training. In other words the fiction writer has got to know life, either by intuition, in which case he has genius; or by experience, in which case talent will serve. And having achieved the power to see life profoundly and sincerely you must then find a way to tell your public what you see, to tell it in such a manner that you create the illusion of life in your characters, and make the characters create the illusion of reality in their environment. An author may write cleverly, smartly, brightly, with quite a little sense of drama, sell his stories easily, and have a name that you remember, and not possess one atom of real insight into human nature, and not one moment’s grasp of power to portray humanity through words that convince and thrill. I am not at all satisfied with the idea that if you amuse the public you are a good short story writer, or even if you manage to thrill the public that your short stories are worthwhile. Very young and very poor writers can do both these things. And I do not think it at all necessary to have happy endings to stories. This absurd catering to the more feeble public mind is not thought essential in writing an opera or a great tragedy or in painting a picture. Wagner did not think that it was necessary at the end of “Götterdämmerung” to have his orchestra play some tinkling little melody to send his people home happy. He wrote his music so that you go home after the great sacrifice of _Brunnhilde’s_ filled with mighty splendid thoughts of life, love, death and immortality. When Rodin pictured “A Thinker,” a man facing universal problems, he did not carve at his side a merry little clown to cheer up the beholder, who is afraid of thought. And a poet does not jest at the end of a beautiful rhythm that has poured out through his heart and soul. So why should we ask of the writer, and always of the dramatist, that these particular works of art should invariably leave humanity smiling, light-hearted and forgetful. I do not think it is necessary to consider the ending at all, let it develop from the psychology of the people in the story, and make the episode as it would be in life to the best of your ability.