The captain turned on his seat, and looked up the boat. His face was quiet, but full of confidence, which seemed to pass from him into the crew. Tom felt calmer and stronger, as he met his eye. "Now mind, boys, don't quicken," he said cheerily; "four short strokes to get way on her, and then steady. Here, pass up the lemon."

And he took a sliced lemon out of his pocket, put a small piece in his own mouth, and then handed it to Blake, who followed his example, and passed it on. Each man took a piece; and just as bow had secured the end, Miller called out,

"Now, jackets off, and get her head out steadily."

The jackets were thrown on shore, and gathered up by the boatmen in attendance. The crew poised their oars, No. 2 pushing out her head, and the captain doing the same for the stern. Miller took the starting rope in his hand.

"How the wind catches her stern," he said; "here, pay out the rope one of you. No, not you some fellow with a strong hand. Yes, you'll do,” he went on, as Hardy stepped down the bank and took hold of the rope; "let me have it foot by foot as I want it. Not too quick; make the most of itthat'll do. Two and three, just dip your oars in to give her way."

The rope paid out steadily, and the boat settled to her place. But now the wind rose again, and the stern drifted in towards the bank.

"You must back her a bit, Miller, and keep her a little further out or our oars on stroke side will catch the bank." "So I see; curse the wind. Back her, one stroke all. Back her, I say!" shouted Miller.

It is no easy matter to get a crew to back her an inch just now, particularly as there are in her two men who have never rowed a race before, except in the torpids, and one who has never rowed a race in his life.

However, back she comes; the starting rope slackens in

Miller's left hand and the stroke, shipping his oar, pushes the stern gently om again.

There goes the second goal one short mitme more, and we are off. Short minme, indeed, you wouldn't say so if you were in the boat, with your heart in your mouth and trembling all over like a man with the palsy. Those sixty seconds before the starting gun in your first race-why, they are a little lifetime.

"By Jove, we are drifting in again," said Miller, in horror. The captain looked grim but said nothing; it was too late now for him to be unshipping again. Here, catch hold of the long boat-hook, and fend her off."

Hardy, to whom this was addressed, seized the boat-hook, and, standing with one foot in the water, pressed the end of the boat-hook against the gunwale, at the full stretch of his arm, and so, by main force, kept the stern out. There was just room for the stroke oars to dip, and that was all. The starting rope was as taut as a harp-string will Miller's left hand hold out?

He

It is an awful moment. But the coxswain, though almost dragged backwards off his seat, is equal to the occasion. holds his watch in his right hand with the tiller rope. "Eight seconds more only. Look out for the flash. Remember, all eyes in the boat.”

There it comes, at last — the flash of the starting gun. Long before the sound of the report can roll up the river, the whole pent-up life and energy which has been held in leash, as it were, for the last six minutes, is loose, and breaks away with a bound and a dash which he who has felt it will remember for his life, but the like of which, will he ever feel it again? The starting ropes drop from the coxswain's hands, the oars flash into the water, and gleam on the feather, the spray flies from them, and the boats leap forward.1

Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford.

83. Dialogue. One of the means of enlivening the course of a narrative and at the same time, if skillfully employed, of helping forward the movement consists in the use of dialogue. On the principle that impressions received at first hand are always more vivid than those received at second hand, the actual words used by a character in a story will interest the reader more readily than any report of those words which the writer may give. In dialogue the characters are actually placed before the reader. His imagination is thus the better able to make them seem real. Hence it is that dialogue, when skillfully used, tends to give to a narrative an air of lifelikeness and reality.

The novice needs to beware, however, of the temptation to introduce dialogue into his narrative merely for the sake of "making talk." Desultory conversation in a story is wearisome in the extreme. To be good, dialogue must have point; that is, every speech or observation which a character makes must be significant, must serve as a means either of revealing the speaker's own personality or of contributing something to the action of the narrative.

84. The ending. The way in which a narrative ends is responsible for no small part of its success or failure. As has already been indicated, the end is that point towards which the whole course of the narrative tends and in which it receives completeness and definiteness of form. Beyond this point the reader's interest should never be tempted to go. Not

only that, but the reader should be made to feel that anything added after the end is once reached is distinctly irrelevant, is matter "belonging to another story," as Mr. Kipling is wont to say. In story-telling to go too far is as bad as not to go far enough. If a story is not complete, it is, of course, unsatisfactory; if it is more than complete, it may be just as unsatisfactory.

Descriptive details, or details that in any way tend to retard the movement of the story, should never be brought in near the end, for, as a rule, the movement should be more rapid towards the end than at any other point. As a general rule, also, the end should have something of the nature of a climax; that is to say, the emphasis should be so distributed that the interest will tend to heighten towards the end and be greatest at or near the conclusion.

EXERCISES

1. Analyze Stevenson's Will o' the Mill from the point of view of (a) unity, (b) plot, (c) characterization, (d) setting, (e) diction, (f) the moral.

2. Determine roughly the relative proportions of description and narration in Parkman's The Oregon Trail.

3. Show what methods of portraying character Bret Harte uses in The Outcasts of Poker Flat.

SUGGESTED SUBJECTS FOR THEMES

1. The story of my life.

2. A vacation experience.

3. A day's hunting.

4. How I missed "making" the football team.

5. The life history of a "coon."

6. How the fox outwitted the hound.

7. The exploits of Spot.

8. A house party.

9. A bit of local history.

10. How irrigation is reclaiming the desert. 11. My first experience in sailing a boat.

12. The funniest story I ever heard.

13. The story of a newsboy.

14. How a newspaper gets its news. 15. A short story.

16. A battle between ants.

17. My experience as an agent.

18. How I earned my first dollar.

19. How the negative of a photograph is developed.

20. The origin of Thanksgiving.

21. How the Yule feast was celebrated in olden times.

22. The coming of the Pilgrim Fathers.

23. The early French settlements in Illinois.

24. The early life of Alexander Hamilton.

25. A criticism of the plot in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

26. Wordsworth's shorter narrative poems.