How To Write

It is supposed that you have learned your letters, and how to make them.
It is supposed that you have written the school copies, from

Apes and Amazons aim at Art

down to

Zanies and Zodiacs are the zest of Zoroaster

It is supposed that you can mind your p's and q's, and, as Harriet Byron said of Charles Grandison, in the romance which your great-grandmother knew by heart, "that you can spell well." Observe the advance of the times, dear Stephen. That a gentleman should spell well was the only literary requisition which the accomplished lady of his love made upon him a hundred years ago. And you, if you go to Mrs. Vandermeyer's party to-night, will be asked by the fair Marcia, what is your opinion as to the origin of the Myth of Ceres!

These things are supposed. It is also supposed that you have, at heart and in practice, the essential rules which have been unfolded in Chapters II. and III. As has been already said, these are as necessary in one duty of life as in another,--in writing a President's message as in finding your way by a spotted trail, from Albany to Tamworth.

These things being supposed, we will now consider the special needs for writing, as a gentleman writes, or a lady, in the English language, which is, fortunately for us, the best language of them all.

I will tell you, first, the first lesson I learned about it; for it was the best, and was central. My first undertaking of importance in this line was made when I was seven years old. There was a new theatre, and a prize of a hundred dollars was offered for an ode to be recited at the opening,--or perhaps it was only at the opening of the season. Our school was hard by the theatre, and as we boys were generally short of spending-money, we conceived the idea of competing for this prize. You can see that a hundred dollars would have gone a good way in barley-candy and blood-alleys,--which last are things unknown, perhaps, to Young America to-day. So we resolutely addressed ourselves to writing for the ode. I was soon snagged, and found the difficulties greater than I had thought. I consulted one who has through life been Nestor and Mentor to me,--(Second class in Greek,--Wilkins, who was Nestor?--Right; go up. Third class in French,--Miss Clara, who was Mentor?--Right; sit down),--and he replied by this remark, which I beg you to ponder inwardly, and always act upon:--

"Edward," said he, "whenever I am going to write anything, I find it best to think first what I am going to say."

In the instruction thus conveyed is a lesson which nine writers out of ten have never learned. Even the people who write leading articles for the newspapers do not, half the time, know what they are going to say when they begin. And I have heard many a sermon which was evidently written by a man who, when he began, only knew what his first "head" was to be. The