‘Quite well,’ said Clyde, as he sat down and took up the menu of the
  elaborate dinner.  ‘Quite well, she sent her best respects,’ he added,
  but he said nothing of the lodger, pretty Miss Mary Westlake.

And when, a moment afterwards, the door opened and Grace came flowing in with her lithe noiseless step, dressed in one of Worth’s masterpieces, a wonder of amber, satin, and antique lace, he raised his eyes and looked at her with an earnest scrutiny—­so earnest that she paused with her hand on his chair, and met his eyes with a questioning glance.

  ‘Do you like my new dress?’ she said with a calm smile.

  ‘Your dress?’ he said.  ‘Yes, yes, it is very pretty, very.’  But to
  himself he added, ‘Yes, they are alike, strangely alike.’

Which last remark may be applied with justice to the conversations of all our novelists.  There appears no necessity for their commencement, no reason for their continuance, no object in their conclusion; the reader finds himself in a forest of verbiage from which he is extricated only at the end of the chapter, which is always, however, ‘to be continued.’

It is true that these story-tellers for the million generally keep ’a gallop for the avenue’ (an incident of a more or less exciting kind to finish up with), but it is so brief and unsatisfactory that it hardly rises to a canter; the author never seems to get into his stride.  The following is a fair example: 

But before we let the curtain fall, we must glance for a moment at another picture—­a sad and painful one.  In one of those retreats, worse than a living tomb, where reside those whose reason is dead, though their bodies still live, is a small spare cell.  The sole occupant is a woman, young and very beautiful.  Sometimes she is quiet and gentle as a child; sometimes her fits of frenzy are frightful to witness; but the only word she utters is ‘Revenge,’ and on her hand she always wears a plain gold band with a cross of black pearls.

This conclusion, which I chanced upon before I read the tale which preceded it, naturally interested me immensely.  Here, thought I, is at last an exciting story; I shall now find one of those literary prizes in hopes, perhaps, of hitting upon which the penny public endures so many blanks.  I was quite prepared to have my blood curdled; my lips were ready for a full draught of gore; yet, I give you my word, there was nothing in the whole story worse than a bankruptcy.

This is what makes the success of penny fiction so remarkable; there is nothing whatever in the way of dramatic interest to account for it; nor of impropriety either.  Like the lady friend of Dr. Johnson, who congratulated him that there were no improper words in his dictionary, and received from that unconciliatory sage the reply, ’You have been looking for them, have you?’ I have carefully searched my fifty samples of penny fiction for something wrong, and