To proceed to write original allegory you will need to pay especial attention to (1) the series of lessons you mean to teach: Shall it be in the realm of politics, trade, education, or general morals? (2) The tone of your teaching: Shall it be humorous or grave? (3) The kind of personages: Shall they be real persons made more-or-less typical and abstract, or shall they be abstractions made more-or-less concrete and individual? (4) The course of the action: What shall happen? There must be something a-doing that is in itself interesting and that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. You must not fall into the error of merely enumerating and cataloguing. You must have a definite action going forward in which your personages take a necessary part. Allegory fell into disrepute in the past because of the attempts of lazy and careless writers. There is evidence of its revival as a popular type. A present-day writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_ has shown us how vigorous, informing, and pungent it may be: "The Novelist's Allegory" is entirely worth while with its good old-fashioned flavor. (5) You must pay attention to the characterizations: you must see to it that the speeches you put into the mouths of your creatures could be delivered by them in the world or society you have got together. Everything in the action--the time, the place, the characters of the persons--must conform to the ideal nature of the subject. The laws of the actual universe you may violate, but not the laws of your imaginary universe. Moreover, the nearer the actual and the imaginary come together on essentials, the more effective your preaching will be. What you write as author's narrative must be vital and contributive. Make your description of dress and gesture so vivid that it will quicken the imagination of your readers. Never yourself think of your personages as abstractions. Let them live and move before you as real beings; then tell about them. A testimony to the return of allegory into good favor is its use on the stage. We no longer are afraid to see that Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" is an allegorical satire and not the bucolic love tale that some persons try to make it, and that even the wonderful scene of Ase's death is pathos serving satire. Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird," which is unmistakable allegory, has pleased the latest theater-going public high and low. [Present-day interest in primitive types]