Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 10.djvu/18

2 ''In style "Dick Sands" is one of its author's most artistic works, though much of the beauty of a writer's style is necessarily lost in translation. Verne, like most French authors, was far more anxious than are the English about these questions of musical sound, melodious flow, and mechanical form in general. "Dick Sands" is one of the books about which he himself said that he rewrote them six or seven times—" and polished after that."'' ''In the construction of his narratives, their flow of plot 'and interest of incident, he was even more painstaking, if that be possible. He said once, " It is necessary in writing to demand of oneself with each page, what one is going to put there in order that the reader shall be eager to turn to the following page." In this principle he declared was bound up the entire secret of successful authorship. He certainly followed his own teaching with remarkable skill.''

''"Measuring a Meridian," is another African tale, first 'published in 1874 under the cumbrous title " The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa." The story was afterward revised and reissued under its briefer title. It is a hunting story, perhaps Verne's very ablest effort In that line. It has aroused many a youthful sportsman's throbbing eagerness for the chase, has given him his first knowledge and his earliest enthusiasm for the heart-stirring excitement to be found in "hunting big game."''