| Show NAMINO characters trouble experienced by novelists in tb old style bot up to th ideas of modern headers up to date demanded all the mechanism of novel writing nas a fascination for the general public and no part more so than the fitting of names to the characters why certain appellations appel lations are chosen whose aptness and quaintness at once strikes the reader is a question of great interest tha old fashioned tales and plays with their Sneer wells back bites bellairs Be lairs etc and the later case rays follow the simple rule of descriptive names but the raison detre of the many thousands which constantly absorb the public interest is utterly uncertain bickens it is well known ransacked old london for quaint and curious names shop signs were his special hunting ground and in this he had a french counterpart balzac the story is a twice told tale bow the great novelist dragged his companion through paris one memorable night in search of a name to fit some one of his stupendous creations and just as the dawn was beginning to break and the companions strength was failing a eign was found which bore a name sufficiently outlandish to suit even balzack Balz acs taste the name given he was wont to declare it grew to the character 60 that separation was to him utterly impossible such a separation was recently enforced on an author miss anna B walker well known from her many charming books and even more famous as the sister of warner who wrote the ejde wide world planned a book which was to treat of west point life in searching for a name for her hero which would not be likely to appear in any army register an old name came to her mind one that she had not heard for more than fifty years and then only once the owner having been a client of her father she recalled hearing him comment of the strangeness of the name and only that circumstance impressed it on her memory the book was written with the hero bearing the quaint old name but when she submitted it to the publishers she was informed that there was some one living of that name who decidedly objected to having it appear in a book distinctive as it was through its oddness with inward protest the patient author then set about to find another name but the personality of her hero had become indissolubly bound to her first choice and no oiher one seemed to fit it N Y herald |
