PART III.-NARRATION AND DESCRIPTION: THE SHORT STORY

The short story, compared with incident, has a wider field of view, deeper insight into life, finer artistic method. The stream of circumstance is longer, character is implicated, and the total effect more rounded and com

plete. The short story may be a simple narrative, a short tale as in Poe's stories and Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. But it may be more than a simple narrative, it may seek to compass life. With more recent writers -Mr. Bret Harte, Mr. Kipling, Mr. Aldrich, and Miss Wilkins the short story is a drama in miniature, in which character, situation, plot, work together in close union and balanced perfection. And they gain intensity by condensation-the story is begun as near the end as possible, previous details are merely suggested and attention is concentrated on a few salient points.1

II. Theme:-A MAGNUM OPUS.

Leeby came but with a faded little book, the title already rubbed from its shabby brown covers. I opened it, and then all at once I saw before me again the man who wrote and printed it and died. He came hobbling up the brae, so bent that his body was almost at right angles to his legs, and his broken silk hat was carefully brushed as in the days when Janet, his sister, lived. Jimsy was a poet, and for the space of thirty years he lived in a great epic on the Millennium. This is the book presented to me by Jess, that lies so quietly 1 REFERENCES FOR READING. The following are recommended. Rudyard Kipling, Muhammed Din, Drums of the Fore and Aft, The Man Who Would Be King, The Brushwood Boy, and various stories of the two Jungle Books. Bret Harte, The Luck of Roaring Camp, Tennessee's Pardner, M'liss. T. B. Aldrich, Marjorie Daw, Père Antoine's Date-Palm, Quite So. Mary E. Wilkins, A Humble Romance, A Taste of Honey, The Bar Lighthouse. F. R. Stockton, The Lady or the Tiger. R. L. Stevenson, The Merry Men, Will o' the Mill. G. W. Cable, Old Creole Days (selections).

See, for a longer list, Dye, The Story-teller's Art.

on my topmost shelf now. Open it, however, and you will find that the work is entitled "The Millennium: an Epic Poem, in Twelve Books: by James Duthie." Jimsy had educated himself, after the idea of writing something that the world, would not willingly let die came to him, and he began his book before his education was complete. So far as I know, he never wrote a line that had not to do with "The Millennium." By trade Jimsy was a printer, a master-printer with no one under him, and he printed and bound his book, ten copies in all, as well as wrote it. To print the poem took him, I dare say, nearly as long as to write it, and he set up the pages as they were written, one by one. He had but a small stock of type, and on many occasions he ran out of a letter. The letter e tried him sorely. Those who knew him best say that he tried to think of words without an e in them, but when he was baffled he had to use a little a or an o instead. He could print correctly, but in the book there are a good many capital letters in the middle of words, and sometimes there is a note of interrogation after "alas" or "woe's me,' because all the notes of exclamation had been used up.

So he passed from youth to old age, and all his life seemed a dream, except that part of it in which he was writing, or printing, or stitching, or binding "The Millennium." At last the work was completed.

"It is finished," he printed at the end of the last book. "The task of thirty years is over."

It is indeed over. No one ever read "The Millennium." I am not going to sentimentalize over my copy,

for how much of it have I read? But neither shall

I

say

it was written to no end.

—J. M. Barrie.

Thrums."

Abridged from "A Window in

III. Principles-The Short Story.-Study in the extract above:

(i) the motive of the story, the central idea-the bit of human life and experience that gives the story its meaning;

(ii) the characters whose nature makes the motive and its effects possible;

(iii) the setting, or the scene, time, surroundings that lend probability, color, interest to the narrative;

(iv) the action or sequence of acts through which the motive is worked out in human life.

IV. Composition. Having determined the parts of the story, we turn to write the story itself. In the simplest form of treatment, the story requires (i) first,—the time of the story, which may be very vaguely “Once upon a time," or very exactly, the year or period; then whatever descriptive account of the place and situation is necessary. Then (ii) the characters are brought forward, described only for those striking characteristics of person or disposition out of which the story springs. Then (iii) we pass to the plot (see principles of narration, pp. 156, 157, 164-166). The motive (iv) is developed in the details of the story.

1. Tell the story of the Great Work, making the subject a useless invention.

2. TELL THE STORY OF THE (6 CHILD MUSICIAN."

He played for his lordship's levee,

He played for her ladyship's whim,
Till the poor little head was heavy,
And the poor little brain would swim.

And the face grew peaked and eerie,
And the large eyes strange and bright,
And they said, too late,
"He is weary!

He shall rest for at least to-night!"

But at dawn, when the birds were waking,
As they watched in the silent room,
With the sound of a strained cord breaking,
A something snapped in the gloom.

'Twas a string of his violoncello,
And they heard him stir in his bed:
"Make room for a tired little fellow,

Kind God!" was the last he said.

-Austin Dobson.

The motive of the story here is the sudden death of a child-musician through over-excitement and overwork, coincident with the breaking of the string of his violoncello in his sick room. Study the development of each part of the plot; note how the interest rises, and how striking and effective is the conclusion. The story gains in plot interest by departing from the simple plan of bringing forward its parts. Inversion, bringing a part of the action before the setting, is a frequent device for a successful opening.

3. In imitation of Addison's "Adventure of a Shilling," Tatler, No. 8,1 tell the story of:-(1) A Dollar

1 1 Reprinted in Dobson's Eighteenth Century Essays.