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CHAPTER L 255 well understood that while all the world may love a lover, it does not follow that stories of the love of a man for a woman always possess the strongest appeal. Love stories will be standard always, and they will be plentiful, as well, for to the practiced man it is a simple mat- ter to take the triangle and grind out a love story. Where the novice writes of crime because that comes easiest, the more experienced man writes of sex-love. All that is necessary is to take a man and two women or two women and a man, mix them up, straighten them out again and mail the manuscript. There are degrees of skill shown in the telling, but it is a love story still; merely one of many. The Edi- tor is always assured a supply of love stories and so, feeling certain, he is more keenly on the lookout for stories with less hackneyed themes. 19. Write love stories, but avoid the stock themes .such as the lovers' quarrel, the woman who does not love her husband, the little child who makes two loving hearts one, and the rest of the catalogue, but try to get away from the straight love story. If you can, you will find a more ready market. 20. Of all themes that of mother-love probably makes the strongest appeal to the emotions. This does not mean that any tale of the love of a mother for her child will be acceptable. To the contrary, because this is the strongest appeal it follows that you must not take liberties with the subject. The story that is clearly an effort to trade on this idea will excite only irritation and disgust. It is something too fine, too exalted, to ,be prostituted to the devices of the clumsy writer. The true lover of music merely smiles when the gutter band butchers rag- time melodies. It is a fitting fate for a cheap song. But to reduce the classics of song to barber's shop chords is irritating. The story of mother-love must not only be well told, but it must ring true. It must suggest that you have selected the theme because you venerate it and that your plot is not a commercial venture but homage to the beautiful attribute. You must seem to write because you have a message and not merely because you have been told that mother-love is what the vaudeville actors call "sure-fire stuff." 21. And even where mother-love is incidental to and not the basis of your story you must treat it with respect. You cannot show the scheming society mother seeking to sell her daughter to the highest bidder and then, later in the play, descant upon her mother-love. This will not be accepted as belonging and will be resented as an un- truthful picture of life. You cannot make a maudlin appeal to cheap sentiment with a theme of so great an importance. 22. In the same way love of country is something that should not be abused because it lies so close to the heart. In the theatre you may have risen to your feet because the national air was being played even while you cursed the cheap musical director or incompetent vaudeville performer who resorted to its use. The man who gives up his life for his country is truly a heroic figure, but the man who gives up his life for his country merely that his uninventive author may