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 courthouse, 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

by waters, foundered, and was ingulfed, going down in a perpendicular direction; for a gate which stood in the field, on the top of the hill, after sinking with its posts for thirty or forty feet, remained in so true and upright a position as to open and shut with great exactness, just as in its first situation. Several oaks also are still standing, and in a state of vegetation, after taking the same desperate leap. That great part of this prodigious mass was absorbed in some gulf below, is plain also from the inclining ground at the bottom of the hill, which is free and unencumbered; but would have been buried in heaps of rubbish, had the fragment parted and fallen forward. About a hundred yards from the foot of this hanging coppice stood a cottage by the side of a lane; and two hundred yards lower, on the other side of the lane, was a farmhouse, in which lived a laborer and his family; and just by, a stout new barn. The cottage was inhabited by an old woman, and her son, and his wife. These people in the evening, which was very dark and tempestuous, observed that the brick floors of their kitchens began to heave and part; and the walls seemed to open, and the roofs to crack; but they all agree that no tremor of the ground, indicating an earthquake, was ever felt; only that the wind continued to make a most tremendous roaring in the woods and hangers. The miserable inhabitants, not daring to go to bed, remained in the utmost solicitude and confusion, expecting every moment to be buried under the ruins of their shattered edifices. When daylight came they were at leisure to contemplate the devastations of the night; they then found that a deep rift, or chasm, had opened under their houses, and torn them, as it were, in two; and that one end of the barn had suffered in a similar manner: that a pond near the cottage had undergone a strange reverse, becoming deep at the shallow end, and so vice versa ; that many large oaks were removed out of their perpendicu

lar, some thrown down, and some fallen into the heads of neighboring trees; and that a gate was thrust forward, with its hedge, full six feet, so as to require a new track to be made to it. From the foot of the cliff the general course of the ground, which is pasture, inclines in a moderate descent for half a mile, and is interspersed with some hillocks, which were rifted, in every direction, as well towards the great woody hanger as from it. In the first pasture the deep clefts began; and running across the lane, and under the buildings, made such vast shelves that the road was impassable for some time; and so over to an arable field on the other side, which was strangely torn and disordered. The second pasture-field, being more soft and springy, was protruded forward without many fissures in the turf, which was raised in long ridges resembling graves, lying at right angles to the motion. At the bottom of this enclosure the soil and turf rose many feet against the bodies of some oaks that obstructed their farther course, and terminated this awful commotion.

-WHITE: The Natural History of Selborne, Letter xlv. E. In the foregoing selections are there any sentences or parts of sentences that might be omitted without hurting the story? At what part of each story were you most interested?

Assignment in Narrative Partly Invented.

77. Complete the following. Rewrite from the beginning and introduce more descriptive detail, if you wish: :

One afternoon we visited a cave out of which a little stream found its way, much to our discomfort when we crawled through the doorway. Once inside, however, we were able to walk upright. Sam led, a lighted candle in his hand; George and I followed close after. I didn't like the gloom and the dampness and secretly wished that Sam