7. The finish of the boat race. 8. Five minutes before six in a department store. 9. A fake auction sale. 10. The barkers" at the county fair. 11. The collision. 12. Violet-hunting in May. 13. The old trail. 14. The old camp ground. 15. Loafing on the campus. 16. Signs of spring. 17. Familiar characters in the reading room. 18. The cheerful conductor. 19. My favorite policeman. 20. Around the camp fire. 21. Class room diversions. 22. A lone pine tree. 23. The place to go for ferns. 24. An old residence street or square abandoned to trade. 25. The back-porch side of city life. 26. The half-hour after lunch. 27. The biggest snowstorm. 28. The bend in the river. 29. The finest place on the lake. 30. A long carry in the woods. 31. Birds in winter. 32. A school playground. 33. Milking time. 34. Making camp in a storm. 35. The parade. 36. Watching the baseball returns. 37. Before the game. 38. In the court room. 39. The hardest hole on the links. 40. Shooting the rapids. 41. The theater car. 42. The old bookstore 43. Market day. 44. The quiet hour in the library. 45. Sunset in the mountains. 46. Dress parade at the post. 47. The old cobbler's shop. 48. The commuter's accommodation train. 49. In the engine-room. 50. The saw mill. 51. Queer characters in the orchestra. 52. A flirt. 53. The innocent bystander. 54. The deserted house. 55. A spring in the woods. 56. Going for the mail. 57. An employment agency. 58. The summit view. 59. The quarry. 60. On the bridge. 61. The city lights at night 62. The owl car. 63. A country hotel. 64. The rescue mission meeting. 65. Closing the forms in a newspaper office. 66. The flower show. 67. At the fireside. 68. Fisherman's rest. 69. The busiest corner. 70. An old plantation. 71. The battleground. 72. The mysterious hermit. 73. Mrs. Jones getting the six children ready for school. 74. The falls. 75. A sweatshop. 76. A strikers' mass-meeting. 77. The early train. 78. After the accident. 79. A student's room as indicating character. 80. Easter Sunday in the cemetery. 81. The cabin in the woods. 82. Taking on the pilot. 83. The wireless cabin on the steamer. 84. Waiting for the sporting extra. 85. Commencement day. 86. The laziest man. 87. A fresh breeze on the bay. 88. The happy butcher. 89. The last dance. 90. At the polls. 91. The children's ward in the hospital. 92. A poet in low life. 93. Isaac, the Socialist tailor. 94. Showing the photograph album. 95. At the end of the pier. 96. A despondent cook. 97. Noon hour at the factory. 98. The truant. 99. A picture exhibition. 100. The haughty waitress. CHAPTER XVII STORY-TELLING AND STORY-WRITING He cometh unto you with a tale which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney SIDNEY. corner. The right honorable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts. SHERIDAN. ALL the world loves a story. "Once upon a time" is the magic phrase that draws a group together about any glib spinner of yarns. Be his tale as old as the pyramids, and as rude as a Druid circle, there will be some to listen and admire. The children he bewitches like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, and the old men he can set to dreaming like the Princess Scheherazade. A good story is the opener of many doors. It introduces a speaker, illuminates discourse, beguiles weariness, banishes gloom, brightens the night, and adorns the day. A peculiar kindliness and gratitude reward the teller of tales. For what poet, or what maker of plays, have we the warm spot in our hearts that we reserve for Poe, and Stevenson, and Kipling, and O. Henry? It is a sufficient proof of the power which fiction holds over us all that we make our way cheerfully through the reams of worthless magazine stories printed every month, content if in vast heaps of rubbish we find a single gem. No one will do this with poetry or drama. We follow the lure of the story because we are hungry for it. After every disappointment we sigh and begin another. Story-telling a training in choice of words. - Now it is no part of the purpose of a freshman course in composition to train fiction writers for the press. There may be one in a class who has the talent for that, and he will find his way to it sooner or later. But every student can learn how to tell a story without bungling and barrenness. Every writer can practice the art of beginnings, the mastery of climax, the secret of stopping when he has got through. Just as the practice of literary description gives training in the selection of apt words, so the study of fictitious narration develops the power of securing interest by the imaginative selection and arrangement of ideas for suspense and climax. Of the required assignments in this chapter none is believed to be beyond the powers of any members of the class. Such a degree of invention as is called for will be found to exist, although latent, in almost every mind. Characteristics of good oral story-telling. - Story-telling from memory is a very different thing from story-writing, but the two have various points in common. In the oral reproduction of stories previously read, or heard, an ordinary person is so intent on recalling the sequence of events that he pays little attention to the manner of presentation. When we listen to good story-tellers, however, we find that they obey many of the laws of original narrative. Some of these laws are as follows: 1. In a story we must have descriptions, pictures of places and persons and things not mere names and labels. 2. Indirect discourse is varied by much directly quoted dialogue. The exact phraseology of this is not repeated by rote from memory, but invented on the spur of the moment. 3. A good story-teller seldom uses the historical present tense. This becomes wearisome in a very few sentences, whereas narration in the past tense has no monotony. The only purpose for which the historical present is sometimes permissible is in a very condensed summary of a story or play, introduced into a criticism. When the story is the main or the only thing, it should always be told in the past tense. |