striking traits of character, but enhancing our interest in the personages by making the characteristics appear as the result of amusing or serious or terrible situations in which the actors are involved.

74.

Assignments in the Effect of Narration.

A. Recall a story in which the interest arises mainly from the action. Recall another in which the chief interest is in the characters.

B. How is expectation aroused in the following narrative? How is it gratified? Is the interest greater in the action or in the revelation of character?

On the afternoon of the 14th of June, 1727, two horsemen might have been perceived galloping along the road from Chelsea to Richmond. The foremost, cased in the jack-boots of the period, was a broad-faced, jolly-looking, and very corpulent cavalier; but by the manner in which he urged his horse, you might see that he was a bold as well as a skilful rider. Indeed, no man loved sport better; and in the hunting fields of Norfolk no squire rode more boldly after the fox, or cheered Ringwood or Sweettips more lustily than he who now thundered over the Richmond road.

He speedily reached Richmond Lodge, and asked to see the owner of the mansion. The mistress of the house and her ladies, to whom our friend was admitted, said he could not be introduced to the master, however pressing the business might be. The master was asleep after his dinner; he always slept after his dinner: and woe be to the person who interrupted him! Nevertheless, our stout friend of the jack-boots put the affrighted ladies aside, opened the forbidden door of the bedroom, wherein upon the bed lay a little

gentleman; and here the eager messenger knelt down in his jack-boots.

He on the bed started up; and with many oaths and a strong German accent asked who was there, and who dared to disturb him?

"I am Sir Robert Walpole," said the messenger. The awakened sleeper hated Sir Robert Walpole. "I have the honor to announce to your Majesty that your royal father, King George I., died at Osnaburg on Saturday last, the 10th instant."

"Dat is one big lie!" roared out his sacred Majesty King George II. But Sir Robert Walpole stated the fact, and from that day until three-and-thirty years after, George, the second of the name, ruled over England.

-THACKERAY: The Four Georges.

Simple Incident.

75. The narrative may be very simple or it may be decidedly complex. The simplest kind of action will suffice for a highly interesting narrative if the writer only knows how to use it. A skilful teller of stories will content himself with those familiar, homely incidents which the Vicar of Wakefield called "migrations from the blue bed to the brown"; and yet, by giving life and movement to his narrative, he will hold the interest of his readers from the beginning to the end. In the Confession of a Housebreaker, for example, Miss Sarah Orne Jewett makes a pleasing story out of the simple fact that once on a summer morning she got up at three o'clock, walked about the garden, and went to bed again. Lowell, in the passage quoted on page 51, has constructed a narrative out of the doings of a pair of

yellow-birds who are trying to build a nest. The stories of Mr. Ernest Thompson-Seton, the animal studies of Miss Mary E. Wilkins, and the charming anecdotes of Miss Repplier about the cat, show how the seemingly trivial actions of animals, wild or tame, may be worked up into fascinating stories.

The requisites of simple narrative are those of all good prose composition. The narrative must have unity, sequence, and climax; that is to say, it must be all about one subject, the various happenings must follow one after another in some regular order and be closely connected together, and the story must increase in interest from the beginning to the end.

76. Assignments in Relating an Actual Experience.

A. There are interesting stories handed down in every family. Perhaps the following will make you recall some interesting incident that happened to your grandfather, or grandmother, or uncle, or some other relative. If so, write it out briefly.

It was after the Revolution. Manufactures, trade, all business was flat on its back. A silver dollar was worth seventy-five; corn was seventy-five dollars a bushel, board five hundred dollars a week. Landed property was worthless, and the taxes were something awful. So the general dissatisfaction turned on the courts and was going to prevent collections. Grandfather Cobb was a judge of the probate court; and when he heard that a mob was howling in front of the court-house, he put on his old Continental regimentals, the old buff and blue, and marched out alone. "Away with your whining!" says he. "If I can't hold this court in peace, I will hold it in blood; if I can't sit as a judge, I will die as a general!" Though he was one man to hundreds, he drew a line in the green, and told the mob that he would shoot with his own hand the first man that

crossed. He was too many for the crowd, standing there in his old uniform in which they knew he had fought for them; and they only muttered and after a while dispersed. They came again the next term of court; but he had his militia and his cannon all ready for them, then; and this time when they got their answer they took it, went off, and never came back. OCTAVE THANET: A Son of the Revolution.

B. The following may call to mind either a ghost-story that you have heard or some strange coincidence. If so, write it out in the form of a letter to a friend who is interested in such things.

A very odd accident this year [1652] befell me, for being come about a law suit to London and lying in a lodging with my door fast locked (and by reason of the great heat that summer, all the side curtains being flung atop of the tester of my bed), I, waking in the morning about eight o'clock, and turning myself with intent to rise, plainly saw within a yard of my bedside, a thing all white like a standing sheet, with a knot atop of it, about four or five feet high, which I considered a good while, and did raise myself up in my bed to view the better. At last I thrust out both my hands to catch hold of it, but, in a moment, like a shadow, it slid to the foot of the bed, out of which I, leaping after it, could see it no more. The little belief I ever had in things of this nature made me the more concerned, and doubting lest something might have happened to my wife, I rid home that day to Petworth in Sussex, where I had left her with her father, the Earl of Northumberland, and as I was going upstairs to her chamber, I met one of my footmen, who told me that he was coming to me with a packet of letters, the which I having taken from him went to my wife, who I found in good health, being in company with Lady Essex, her sister, and another gentlewoman, one Mrs. Ramsey. And, after the first salutation, they all asked me what made me to come

home so much sooner than I intended. Whereupon I told them what had happened to me that morning; which they all wondering at desired me to open and read the letter that I had taken from the footman, which I immediately did, and read my wife's letter to me aloud, wherein she desired my speedy returning as fearing that some ill would happen to me, because that morning she had seen a thing all in white, with a black face, standing by her bedside, which had frightened her so much as to make her shriek out so loud that her woman came running into her room. I confess this seemed very strange, for by examining all particulars we found that the same day, the same hour, and (as near as can be computed) the same minute, all that had happened to me had befallen her, being forty miles asunder. The Lady Essex and Mrs. Ramsey are witnesses to both our relations.

- Letters of Philip, 2d Earl of Chesterfield, p. 11.

C. There is nobody but has taken part in, or been the victim or witness of, a practical joke or a well-planned trick. Make a brief story of one.

D. Does the following remind you of any strange occurrence in Nature in your part of the country? If so, write it out in a letter to a friend who lives in a distant part of the country.

The months of January and February, in the year 1774, were remarkable for great melting snow and vast gluts of rain; so that by the end of the latter month the land-springs, or lavants, began to prevail and to be near as high as in the memorable winter of 1764. The beginning of March also went on in the same tenor; when, in the night between the 8th and 9th of that month, a considerable part of the great woody hanger at Hawkley was torn from its place, and fell down, leaving a high free-stone cliff naked and bare, and resembling the steep side of a chalk-pit. It appears that this huge fragment, being perhaps sapped and undermined