["AUTOLYCUS," in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ of October 11, inveighs
against the necessity of conversation between friends:--"If I
find a girl nice to look at, and she has taken great pains to
make herself nice to look at, why cannot we pass the evening, I
looking at her, and she being looked at? But no, we must talk."]
Undoubtedly, if conversation were abolished, "short stories" in the
future would be still further abbreviated. Here is a beautiful specimen
of blank--or Anthony Hope-less--dialogue:--