Kansas University Weekly.
69
Comment.
There is a chance for some ambitious student of literature to bring his name before the public by writing a little book setting forth the rules of punctuation with such clearness and logic that they will be immediately adopted by the literary world.
At present punctuation is largely arbitrary. Each author has a style of punctuation as well as a style of expression. Even publishing houses differ in this respect. A student, after learning all that his rhetoric contains on the subject, sees the so called rules utterly disregarded in some representative book of a leading publishing house. If he sets up a new model he soon meets another book that contradicts the new rules. Even E.A.Poe, who believed he comprehended the subject, and who wrote a little article stating and illustrating his views, is accused of faulty punctuation. The Germans seem to use the comma more as an ornament than as an accesory to thought. Indeed, many of our English books could dispense with a great number of their commas, and in no way alter the thought.
Perhaps, after all, there are no universal rules for punctuation, and the choice and use of punctuation marks are like the rules for choice and use of words. Nevertheless, I should like to read some book on the History and Philosophy of Punctuation.
The last Chap-Book, complaining about the present acarcity of essays says, "Can we not form a Society for the Resurrection of the Essay and the care of Essayists?
The Chap-Book means well in suggesting some encouragement for this tribe of writers abandoned by the people, but the cause of the essay falling into disfavor is a fault of the essay, and not of the readers. The essay is so prone to advice and display of book-lore, while the weary old world is so vastly overstocked with advice and theory. We are tired of advice; what we desire is to see somebody do something himself, and not sit idly by telling us how we should manage our own affairs. Either the
essay or the world must change nature,or the essay cannot be successfully resurrected.
In these days of cheap printing, when it is so easy for anybody to get almost anything into print, the press is pouring upon the public a mass of literature as varied as the writers who produce it.
A type of story that I have not yet seen analyzed is the "made-to-order" story. Its position is unique. It is made more often to fill a vacancy on paper than a vacancy in the literary field. The "made-to-order" story is no sugar coated pill; it is not made to decorate some moral or some theory. It is intended to be a "just what people want" story, and in that very thing lies its worthlessness.
For example, there is a profusely illustrated periodical in New York that collects various pictures from various sources, and then puts some hack writer to the task of writing a story in which the scenes and characters of these pictures may appear. A curious phase of disjecta membra! But the trick is too plain to deceive. The magazine in question does not boast of literary eminence. It aims at being a picture book. Therefore its "made-to-order" stories are of some use.
But occasionally "made-to-order" stories appear in a certain so-called highly literary pamphlet. For example, a recent number contained a story whose plot was the St. Louis Convention. Republican politicians ought to enjoy this story, but it aims to be "just-what people want" more than it aims at artistic effect.
This same publication evidently thinks there is room for the "made-to-order," for a later issue says, "It is time for some one to write the great silver novel. It may not be known to Mr. Bryan and his managers that novels can be commissioned. Or it may not have come into their minds that they might hitch their wagon to the star of literature."
When we read a story, and at the close find that it was intended to convey some moral or express some theory, we justly feel cheated. To read a story that proves to be an advertise-