At present in our college papers there is a strong tendency toward story-writing. The tendency is a good one; for a well told story is interesting, while a poor one is, perhaps, not as bad as some other poor things. Yet too many of the college stories have the fault of open insincerity. A man tries to write of what he cannot so vividly imagine as to make it a part of his own mental experience. His situations are forced, and the whole affair is wretched, - a result of the author's going beyond himself, to paint what he has neither seen nor felt. Of course you can often relate what you have not actually beheld; but still you must have something on which to base your ideas; you must have before you a real fact or passion which you may idealize.

Here lies the trouble with those tales of blighted love. Few or none of us at college have ever loved passionately; nor have many of us lost what we value far more than life. Our cry of bitterterness and woe is hollow, It comes from smiling lips. So such stories at best are but feeble imitations of true work.

Then, in order to do something striking, to scare people, we try to bring in the fantastic and horrible. But unluckily we have never seen what is fantastic or horrible. At most we have only read about such things; as a full realization of the matter is yet beyond us. Accordingly, when we try to write in this forced way, our productions are simply weak and unnatural.

It would be well for all to remember that most of the successful story tellers have written clearly and feelingly of the everyday life about them, - a life which they knew thoroughly. The number of men who have succeeded in other lines of narration can be counted upon the fingers. To tell about something very sad and awful may possibly benefit a young author, because it is exercise for his imagination; it may even amuse him. But generally it neither benefits nor amuses anyone else. There is one Poe, and one Hawthorne; and their mantles have not fallen promiscuously on all undergraduates.

Yet there is around us, and in all our lives stuff enough to make good stories. And if there is not this material, we can never do much with what we borrow. A fellow need not necessarily confine himself to Adirondack deer hunts and the like; but almost any ordinary series of events may be idealized into something worth printing. We must take out of the mass of ephemeral, and comparatively insignificant happenings, the things lasting and significant. In other words, we must put into our work the touches of nature which make our characters alive, and not cunningly painted figures. These touches, which alone give worth to a sketch, show man as he is, and always has been. They are nothing but the grains of enduring truth taken out of the chaff of circumstances. And around every one of us is enough chaff worth winnowing.

A short story, then, is often one of the best contributions to a college paper. But we should leave the misery and wretchedness, the supernatural and sombre, which we have not yet the power to describe, to those who have tasted bitterness and sorrow. And let us have more that is healthful and honest, told with simplicity and directness.