Chapter XII: NARRATION (Continued)

=74. Historical Stories.=--In writing on the subjects given below, you are to try to make a complete story, including the dialogue between the principal characters, what descriptions of scenery or people or houses you think are needed to make your picture vivid and your persons real, and what explanation of conditions or surroundings are necessary to make the action intelligible.

Once upon a time a worthy merchant of London, named Gilbert
à Becket, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and was taken
prisoner by a Saracen lord. This lord, who treated him kindly
and not like a slave, had one fair daughter, who fell in love
with the merchant; and who told him that she wanted to become
a Christian, and was willing to marry him if they could fly to
a Christian country. The merchant returned her love, until he
found an opportunity to escape, when he did not trouble himself
about the Saracen lady, but escaped with his servant Richard,
who had been taken prisoner along with him, and arrived in
England and forgot her. The Saracen lady, who was more loving
than the merchant, left her father's house in disguise to
follow him, and made her way, under many hardships, to the
seashore. The merchant had taught her only two English words
(for I suppose he must have learnt the Saracen tongue himself,
and made love in that language), of which London was one, and
his own name, Gilbert, the other. She went among the ships
saying, "London! London!" over and over again, until the sailors
understood that she wanted to find an English vessel that would
carry her there; so they showed her such a ship, and she paid
for her passage with some of her jewels, and sailed away. Well!
The merchant was sitting in his counting house in London one
day, when he heard a great noise in the street; and presently
Richard came running in from the warehouse with his eyes wide
open and his breath almost gone, saying, "Master, master, here
is the Saracen lady!" The merchant thought Richard was mad;
but Richard said, "No, master! As I live, the Saracen lady is
going up and down the city, calling 'Gilbert! Gilbert!'" Then
he took the merchant by the sleeve and pointed out a window;
and there they saw her among the gables and waterspouts of
the dark, dirty streets, in her foreign dress, so forlorn,
surrounded by a wondering crowd, and passing slowly along,
calling "Gilbert! Gilbert!" When the merchant saw her and
thought of the tenderness she had shown him in his captivity,
and of her constancy, his heart was moved, and he ran down into
the street; and she saw him coming, and with a great cry fainted
in his arms. They were married without loss of time, and Richard
(who was an excellent man) danced with joy the whole day of the
wedding; and they all lived happily ever afterward.

This merchant and the Saracen lady had one son, Thomas à
Becket. He it was who became the favorite of King Henry the
Second.--CHARLES DICKENS: _A Child's History of England._

Read this over very carefully and note the construction of it. The first half is plain narration, such as you have employed in historical writing, in fables, etc., but the second half is embellished narration, or a report of facts that at the same time gives you a lifelike picture of how they took place. After telling you the first half of his story without description, or any attempt to make you see the scenes, Dickens gives you a complete and striking picture of the last part of the action. It is by no means always best to adopt this method in story telling, but in re-telling historical stories it is often a good plan, since frequently your reader needs a brief explanation of what the general conditions are before he can really understand the tale you wish to tell him. For instance, in writing the story of Robin Hood for a little boy, you would need to explain some of the conditions of England at that time, so that your reader would not think of him as a common thief and poacher.

=Exercise 121.=--Look up the facts about any of the following
subjects, think them over, make the persons and scenes real to
your own mind, and write as though trying to make the story
clear, intelligible, interesting, and vivid to a boy or girl
eight years old.

1. Robin Hood. 2. William Tell and his little son. 3. King
Alfred and the cakes. 4. John Smith and Pocohontas. 5. The youth
of Hannibal and his vow of revenge on the Romans. 6. Leonidas
and the Spartans at Thermopylæ. 7. Nathan Hale's capture and
death. 8. The Spanish Armada. 9. Guy Fawkes and his conspiracy.
10. The story of Marcus Curtius. 11. Dick Whittington.

All these subjects have been selected because they naturally
suggest to your mind one vivid and dramatic picture toward the
end, so that you can take as a model the story of Gilbert à
Becket. After you have studied the facts of each story, see
if a picture does not rise before you of the most exciting or
characteristic moment of the action. Then try to make this
picture real to your reader by the best and most spirited
description you can write. Put yourself in the place of the
persons of the incident you are relating, and try to see the
scene and feel what naturally would move you.

=Exercise 122.=--Re-tell the following well-known stories,
selecting two or three incidents for particularly detailed and
careful treatment. Choose those that appeal to you as affording
a good chance either for animated dialogue, which is an
excellent means of making a scene lifelike, or for description
which shall make the persons and action seem more real. Never
put in any description for its own sake,--only so much as will
help to interest your reader and make him feel and see the
incidents of your story. In these stories, taken from well-known
poems, be careful not to let yourself be influenced by the
words of the poem. Think of the story as apart from its poetic
expression, and write it in your own language.

1. Ulysses and the Cyclops. 2. Ulysses and the Sirens. 3.
Ulysses's arrival at home. 4. Iphigenia. 5. The Pied Piper
of Hamlin. 6. The story of the wooden horse in the siege of
Troy. 7. Jason and the Golden Fleece. 8. The story of Pegasus
and Bellerophon. 9. The One-Hoss Shay. 10. The Falcon. 11.
John Gilpin's Ride. 12. Paul Revere's Ride. 13. Yussouf (James
Russell Lowell). 14. Hervé Riel (Browning). 15. A story from the
Bible, such as that of David and Goliath.

=75. Fictitious Stories.=--In writing on the subjects of the preceding lesson you have been using material furnished you by history or by poetry. The final step in story writing is often considered to be the invention of the material from which you weave your tale; but, as a matter of fact, few writers actually invent their material. What is usually meant by "invention" in story telling is power to see the story which lies in the events of every day. A small incident, if you interest yourself in it, will be of interest to a reader. Once when John Burroughs was fishing on a lake, a mouse ran up his oar into the boat, sat there for a few moments, and then swam back to shore. You could scarcely imagine a less exciting adventure, and yet see what a charming little narrative he has made of it, making you almost feel that you have held the gentle little creature in your hand, and arousing so much sympathy for it in your mind that you are genuinely glad to think it was able to return safely to land:--

I met one of these mice in my travels one day under peculiar
conditions. He was on his travels also, and we met in the middle
of a mountain lake. I was casting my fly there, when I saw, just
sketched or etched upon the glassy surface, a delicate V-shaped
figure, the point of which reached about to the middle of the
lake, while the two sides, as they diverged, faded out toward
the shore. I saw the point of this V was being slowly pushed
across the lake. I drew near in my boat, and beheld a little
mouse swimming vigorously for the opposite shore. His little
legs appeared like swiftly revolving wheels beneath him. As I
came near, he dived under the water to escape me, but came up
again like a cork and just as quickly. It was laughable to see
him repeatedly duck beneath the surface and pop back again in a
twinkling. He could not keep under water more than a second or
two. Presently I reached him my oar, when he ran up it and into
the palm of my hand, where he sat for some time and arranged
his fur and warmed himself. He did not show the slightest fear.
It was probably the first time he had ever shaken hands with a
human being. He had doubtless lived all his life in the woods,
and was strangely unsophisticated. How his little round eyes
did shine, and how he sniffed me to find out if I was more
dangerous than I appeared to his sight!

After a while I put him down in the bottom of the boat and
resumed my fishing. But it was not long before he became very
restless, and evidently wanted to go about his business. He
would climb up to the edge of the boat and peer down into the
water. Finally he could brook the delay no longer and plunged
boldly overboard; but he had either changed his mind or lost his
reckoning, for he started back in the direction from which he
had come, and the last I saw of him was a mere speck vanishing
in the shadows near the shore.--JOHN BURROUGHS: _Squirrels and
Other Fur-Bearing Animals._

=Exercise 123.=--Following this model, tell any incident, either
real or invented, suggested by the following subjects:--

1. Our cat and the dry leaves. 2. Our canary bird and the
thunderstorm. 3. The butcher and the sick dog. 4. The tired
street-car conductor and the lame man. 5. The mother and child
and the little beggar. 6. How a horse got rid of his halter. 7.
The hen and the duck eggs. 8. The elevator boy, the irritable
man, and the soft answer. 9. The teacher's watch left in the
class room and the janitor's little boy. 10. How I lost my
belief in Santa Claus, in fairies. 11. A queer idea I had when
I was younger,--_e.g._ that the North Pole is an actual pole
sticking out from the ground, etc.

=76. The Beginning.=--The beginning of a story is a very important part of it, for the average reader will not go on with a story which does not interest him at once. It is therefore better, as a rule, to begin, not with an introduction, as in historical stories, but with some phrase or sentence that belongs in the action. Then, after you have caught your reader's attention, you can, in a later paragraph, give briefly what explanation is needed.

The beginnings of several excellent stories are given here to show you how they commence without any sort of introduction.

[Edgar Allan Poe's _Descent into the Maelstrom_.] "We had now
reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the
old man seemed too much exhausted to speak."

[Octave Thanet's _The Sheriff_.] "Sheriff Wickliff leaned out of
his office window, the better to watch the boy soldiers march
down the street."

[Louisa M. Alcott's _Jack and Jill_.] "'Clear the track' was the
general cry on a bright December afternoon, when all the boys
and girls of Harmony Village were out enjoying the first good
snow of the season."

=Exercise 124.=--Sometimes the beginning is so full of meaning
that you can almost construct the whole story from it. See if
you can finish the stories begun below:--

1. Waking up with a start, he was very much amazed to find
himself under the counter and not at home in bed. A little
moonlight coming in the grocery window showed him where he
was, and he remembered that he had lain down for a moment's
nap, just as the clerks were closing the doors. Probably no
one had noticed the little errand boy, tired out with his long
day's work and with a long evening before spent over his books.
Suddenly he noticed that the room was growing lighter, and saw a
little tongue of flame shoot up from the floor near him.

2. Jack pulled his hand out of his pocket with a cry of alarm.
"Why I've lost my purse and my railway ticket home!" he said,
"and I don't know a soul in the city. What shall I do!" As he
spoke, he noticed a man step out of a store and try to put up
the awning over the door. The rope caught on a nail, and without
seeing what was the trouble the man jerked impatiently but
uselessly. Jack had been brought up to help people out if he
could. "I think I can do that," he said pleasantly, stepping
forward. The man stopped and looked at him curiously.

3. The mast broke with a loud report and the sail blew overboard
in a breath. The two boys looked at each other with pale faces.
"If this wind keeps up, it looks as though we never should get
back to shore," said George, looking about him despairingly.

4. When Oliver Whiting realized that he had lived with the
Indians for five years, it always surprised him. The time had
slipped by very rapidly since that exciting night of the raid
on the Puritan settlement, when he had been carried off from
his master's house. He had really been happier in the lazy
Indian life than in the busy, active, hard-working household
of the Puritan farmer. As he lay on the grass one summer
evening, listening to the river and watching the stars shine,
he reflected that if he could, he would not choose to go away
from his kindly Indian captors. A low call made him turn his
head, and there, within a few feet of him, stood his old master,
Fear-God Elliott.

5. "Run Johnnie, or the tree will strike you," shouted Mr.
Edwards to his ten-year-old son, pushing him out of the way. The
great tree came crashing down. The child was safe, but the man
lay groaning with pain, both legs pinned down by the terrible,
crushing weight.

"Johnnie, do you suppose you can find your way five miles to
Neighbor Ashley's clearing?" said the man, compressing his pale
lips to keep back a shriek of pain. "If you lose yourself,
you'll starve to death and so shall I, but there's no other way
to save us both."

6. Mary Ellen was thinking of nothing more exciting than her
arithmetic lesson, as she looked absently through the open door
into the long empty hall of the school building. What she saw
there made her catch her breath in horror, but her presence of
mind came instantly to her rescue. If she screamed "Fire! Fire!"
there would be a panic. What could she do? All at once a bright
idea struck her.

In beginning a story of your own, you should take any one of these beginnings as model. You will notice that each of them lets you know at once three main points--the principal character, the place of the action, and the general conditions. It is very important to do this, and, as you notice, these facts can be brought in without stating them definitely and tediously. For instance, the first story given might have begun, "Harry was an errand boy in a grocer's shop. He was poor and had to work hard all day, but he was ambitious, and kept up his studies in the evening. One night he went to sleep under the counter. When he woke up, he saw a tongue of flame darting up from the floor." Do you see how much better the first way of telling you all this about Harry is than the second?

=77. The Ending.=--The end of a story is also very important. It should contain the _point_. This is sometimes the explanation of the action, sometimes the summing up of the spirit of the tale, but in any case it is brief and lively.

=Exercise 125=--See if you can write the stories that go before
the endings given below:--

1. I was trembling with terror as the apparition drew nearer,
and little Pollie was shaking so she could hardly stand. All at
once she burst out in a loud fit of laughter, pointing through
the dusk at the white spirit of our fears. "Why, aren't we
silly!" she cried. "It's no ghost at all,--only our own old
white cow."

2. Pauline had just given up trying to control the maddened
horse, when out of a house ahead of them dashed a man with a
long rope. Coiling this, he threw it deftly around the horse's
neck as it plunged by, and, instantly dropping it about a fence
post, he brought the animal to a dead stop so quickly that
Pauline was thrown out of the wagon. She was unhurt, however,
and the man, who ran to pick her up, exclaimed when he saw who
she was. "Well, perhaps you'll take my advice about horses the
next time," he said laughingly.

3. I splashed wildly, I kicked up a tremendous foam with my
feet, I panted and spluttered like a porpoise; but, looking over
my shoulder, I saw I had passed the line of the old oak tree.
The deed was done,--very badly it might be, but none the less
actually the accomplishment was mine. I had learned to swim at
last!

=78. The Body.=--You have now studied the beginning and the end of a story. The middle part is the easiest of all. You may have learned enough geometry to know that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. A good story is the shortest distance between a good beginning and a good ending. By that you are not to understand actually the shortest statement you can make of the facts involved, but the shortest treatment of your theme which still slights none of the features necessary to make your ending most effective. Fix your mental eye on your ending, and write your story to make that most full of meaning. For instance, the first of the three endings given above would lose most of its value if you did not, in writing the story, describe the lonely house at twilight, the two dreadfully frightened children, and the shapeless white mass looming up through the dusk. Their relief at finding it to be only a cow is neither amusing nor even interesting unless you have shown by a lively description how terribly alarmed they were. In the same way the last ending must be preceded by a humorous account of the great difficulty a boy had in learning to swim. His joy at finding he could make a little headway is only of interest because it comes as a contrast to former discouragement.

=Exercise 126.=--Write a story suggested by any of the following
titles or phrases:--

1. The first time I was badly frightened. 2. The thing I am
proudest of having done. 3. My runaway. 4. How the bird's nest
was saved from the snake. 5. When the elephant broke loose from
the circus. 6. How the fox got the honeycomb away from the bear
by saying it was bad for his health. 7. What I did when our
house caught on fire. 8. How our cat got out of the barn when
she was shut in. 9. Why I got to the train late. 10. How the
children lost in the woods kept house in the cave. 11. What
would happen if the statues in our school building could come to
life. 12. If the pictures could come to life. 13. Christopher
Columbus revisits America. 14. An interesting dream I once had.
15. At this, the Queen of the Fairies touched Hans with her
wand. "Oh," he cried, "I'll never put off doing anything again."
16. The old sailor gave a little shiver of recollection. "Well,
I hope you'll never be in such a place, sonny," he said to the
little boy. 17. The poor old man looked at the kind young lady
very intently. "Weren't you in Archester one summer?" he asked.
"Why, you must be old Farmer Norton, to whom I owe such a lot of
money," she cried. "I never could find you to pay it back."