Chapter II: Incidents

Incident is at once the earliest and the commonest material for narration which we encounter in our own experience. An average life furnishes only a few great adventures, impressive climaxes, and epoch-making events, but every day is filled with a multiplicity of incidents, gay, pathetic, or illuminating, which actually furnish most of our material for conversation, for letters, and for memories. It has been said that the ability to write good narration is likely to be measured by the ability to recognize and relate incidents well, and it will be readily observed that most of the effectiveness of great climaxes is due to the value of the incidents which lead up to them.

Essentially, an incident is an unimportant happening, usually unforeseen and not prepared for, an event which leaves behind it little or no appreciable result. Obviously every life and every day is full of such events, but the task of the writer is to recognize the elements of humor, pathos, tragedy, or human interest which serve to make certain incidents worthy to be remembered and retold. The unseeing person goes home at the end of the day without a single entertaining story to relate, while the man who worked beside him may delight the whole dinner table with half a dozen incidents which entirely failed to impress his unobservant friend.

The incidents given in this section might easily have been lost had they not fallen under the observation of good story tellers, yet each of them deserved to be preserved to entertain the reader with the same touch of interest that the writer found in the experience. Each of them presents a phase of human character, and pleases the reader by humor, pathos, or some lesson in the livableness of life.

The following suggestions may aid the beginner:

1. Examine your memory for experiences which stand out clearly
although they neither were nor are of great importance.

2. Decide what events are associated with the most interesting
people you know; often some incident has had a large part in
forming your impression of these people; and sometimes incidents
take on interest because of the people who figure in them.

3. Begin as late in the story as you possibly can, using little or
no introductory explanation.

F. del P.

INCIDENTS FROM THE LIFE OF LORD FREDERICK HAMILTON

I must plead guilty to two episodes where my sole desire was to avoid disappointment to others, and to prevent the reality falling short of the expectation. One was in India. Barrackpore, the Viceroy of India’s official country house, is justly celebrated for its beautiful gardens. In these gardens every description of tropical tree, shrub and flower grows luxuriantly. In a far-off corner there is a splendid group of fan-bananas, otherwise known as the “Traveller’s Palm.” Owing to the habit of growth of this tree, every drop of rain or dew that falls on its broad, fan-shaped crown of leaves is caught, and runs down the grooved stalks of the plant into receptacles that cunning Nature has fashioned just where the stalk meets the trunk. Even in the driest weather, these little natural tanks will, if gashed with a knife, yield nearly a tumblerful of pure sweet water, whence the popular name for the tree. A certain dull M.P., on his travels, had come down to Barrackpore for Sunday, and inquired eagerly whether there were any Travellers’ Trees either in the park or the gardens there, as he had heard of them, but had never yet seen one. We assured him that in the cool of the evening we would show him quite a thicket of Travellers’ Trees. It occurred to the Viceroy’s son and myself that it would be a pity should the globe-trotting M.P.’s expectations not be realized, after the long spell of drought we had had. So the two of us went off and carefully filled up the natural reservoirs of some six fan-bananas with fresh spring-water till they were brimful. Suddenly we had a simultaneous inspiration, and returning to the house we fetched two bottles of light claret, which we poured carefully into the natural cisterns of two more trees, which we marked. Late in the afternoon we conducted the M.P. to the grove of Travellers’ Trees, handed him a glass, and made him gash the stem of one of them with his pen knife. Thanks to our preparation it gushed water like one of the Trafalgar Square fountains, and the touring legislator was able to satisfy himself that it was good drinking-water. He had previously been making some inquiries about so-called “Palm-wine,” which is merely the fermented juice of the toddy-palm. We told him that some Travellers’ Palms produced this wine, and with a slight exercise of ingenuity we induced him to tap one of the trees we had doctored with claret. Naturally, a crimson liquid spouted into his glass in response to the thrust of his pen-knife, and after tasting it two or three times, he reluctantly admitted that its flavour was not unlike that of red wine. It ought to have been, considering that we had poured an entire bottle of good sound claret into that tree. The ex-M.P. possibly reflects now on the difficulties with which any attempts to introduce “Pussyfoot” legislation into India would be confronted in a land where some trees produce red wine spontaneously.

On another occasion I was going by sea from Calcutta to Ceylon. On board the steamer there were a number of Americans, principally ladies, connected, I think, with some missionary undertaking. When we got within about a hundred miles of Ceylon, these American ladies all began repeating to each other the verse of the well-known hymn:

“What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle,”

over and over again, until I loathed Bishop Heber for having written the lines. They even asked the captain how far out to sea the spicy breezes would be perceptible. I suddenly got an idea, and, going below, I obtained from the steward half a dozen nutmegs and a handful of cinnamon. I grated the nutmegs and pounded the cinnamon up, and then, with one hand full of each, I went on deck, and walked slowly up and down in front of the American tourists. Soon I heard an ecstatic cry, “My dear, I distinctly smelt spice then!” Another turn, and another jubilant exclamation: “It’s quite true about the spicy breezes. I got a delicious whiff just then. Who would have thought that they would have carried so far out to sea!” A sceptical elderly gentleman was summoned from below, and he, after a while, was reluctantly forced to avow that he, too, had noticed the spicy fragrance. No wonder! when I had about a quarter of a pound of grated nutmeg in one hand, and as much pounded cinnamon in the other. Now these people will go on declaring to the end of their lives that they smelt the spicy odours of Ceylon, a full hundred miles out at sea, just as the travelling M.P. will assert that a tree in India produces a very good imitation of red wine. It is a nice point determining how far one is morally responsible one-self for the unconscious falsehoods into which these people have been betrayed. I should like to have had the advice of Mrs. Fairchild, of the _Fairchild Family_ upon this delicate question. I feel convinced that that estimable lady, with her inexhaustible repertory of supplications, would instantly have recited by heart “a prayer against the temptation to lead others into uttering untruths unconsciously,” which would have met the situation adequately, for not once in the book, when appealed to, did she fail to produce a lengthy and elaborately worded petition, adapted to the most unexpected emergencies, and I feel confident that her moral armoury would have included a prayer against tendencies to “leg-pulling.”

From _The Days Before Yesterday_ by Lord
Frederick Hamilton. Copyright 1920, George H.
Doran Company, Publishers.

THE FIANCÉE

MARGUERITE AUDOUX

I was going back to Paris after a few days’ holiday. When I got to the station the train was crowded. I peeped into every carriage, hoping to find a place. There was one in the last carriage, but two big baskets, out of which ducks and hens were peeping, filled the seat. After a long moment’s hesitation, I decided to get in. I apologized for disturbing the passengers, but a man in a blouse said:

“Wait a moment, mademoiselle; I’ll take the baskets down.”

And while I held the basket of fruit which he had on his knees, he slipped the baskets with the ducks and hens under the seat. The ducks did not like it, and told us so. The hens dropped their heads as if they had been insulted, and the peasant’s wife talked to them, calling them by their names.

When I was seated, and the ducks were quiet, the passenger opposite me asked the peasant whether he was taking the birds to market.

“No, sir,” said the man. “I am taking them to my son, who is going to be married the day after to-morrow.”

His face was beaming, and he looked around as if he wanted everybody to know how happy he was. An old woman who was hunched up in the corner among three pillows, and who filled double the space she should occupy, began grumbling about peasants who took up such a lot of room in the train.

The train started, and the passenger who had asked about the birds was opening his newspaper, when the peasant said to him:

“My boy is in Paris. He is working in a shop, and he is going to marry a young lady who is in a shop, too.”

The passenger let his open paper drop to his knees. He held it with one hand and, leaning forward a little, asked:

“Is the fiancée pretty?”

“We do not know,” said the man. “We haven’t seen her yet.”

“Really?” said the passenger. “And if she were ugly, and you did not like her?”

“That is one of the things that can always happen,” answered the countryman. “But I think we shall like her, because our boy is too fond of us to take an ugly wife.”

“Besides,” said the little woman next me, “if she pleases our Philip, she will please us, too.”

She turned to me, and her gentle eyes were full of smiles. She had a little, round, fresh face, and I could not believe that she was the mother of a son who was old enough to marry. She wanted to know whether I was going to Paris too, and when I said yes, the passenger opposite began to joke.

“I should like to bet,” he said, “that this young lady is the fiancée. She has come to meet her father--and mother-in-law, without telling them who she is.”

Everybody looked at me, and I got very red. The countryman and his wife said, together:

“We should be very pleased if it were true.”

I told them that it was not true, but the passenger reminded them that I had walked up and down twice as if I were looking for somebody, and that I had been a long time making up my mind to get into that carriage.

All the other passengers laughed, and I explained as well as I could that this was the only place I had found.

“Never mind,” said the countrywoman. “I shall be very happy if our daughter-in-law is like you.”

“Yes,” said her husband. “I hope she will look like you.”

The passenger kept up his joke; he glanced at me maliciously and said to the peasants:

“When you get to Paris you will see that I am not wrong. Your son will say to you, ‘Here is my fiancée.’”

A little while afterward the countrywoman turned toward me, fumbled in her basket, and pulled out a cake, saying that she had made it herself that morning. I didn’t know how to refuse her, but I said I had a bad cold and a touch of fever, and the cake went back into the basket. Then she offered me a bunch of grapes, which I was obliged to accept. And I had the greatest difficulty in preventing her husband from going to get me something hot to drink when the train stopped.

As I looked at these good people, who were so anxious to love the wife their son had chosen, I felt sorry that I was not to be their daughter-in-law. I knew how sweet their affection would have been to me. I had never known my parents, and had always lived among strangers.

Every now and again I caught them staring at me.

When we arrived at the station in Paris I helped them lift their baskets down, and showed them the way out. I moved a little away from them as I saw a tall young man rush at them and hug them. He kissed them over and over again, one after the other. They smiled and looked very happy. They did not hear the porters shouting as they bumped into them with the luggage.

I followed them to the gate. The son had passed one arm through the handle of the basket with the hens, and thrown the other round his mother’s waist. Like his father, he had happy eyes and a broad smile.

Outside it was nearly dark. I turned up the collar of my coat, and I remained a few steps behind the happy old couple, while their son went to look for a cab. The countryman stroked the head of a big hen with spots of all colors, and said to his wife:

“If we had known that she was not our daughter-in-law, we might have given her the spotted one.”

His wife stroked the spotted hen, too, and said: “Yes, if we had known.”

She made a movement toward the crowd of people who were coming out of the station, and, looking into the distance, said:

“She is going off with all those people.”

The son came back with a cab. He put his father and mother into it and got up onto the box by the driver. He sat sideways so as not to lose sight of them. He looked strong and gentle, and I thought, “His fiancée is a happy girl.”

When the cab had disappeared I went slowly out into the streets. I could not make up my mind to go back to my lonely little room. I was twenty years old, and nobody had ever spoken of love to me.

Marguerite Audoux. From _Everybody’s Magazine_,
with the kind permission of the editors and of
the author.

JIM WOLF AND THE CATS

MARK TWAIN

It was back in those far-distant days--1848 or ’49--that Jim Wolf came to us. He was from a hamlet thirty or forty miles back in the country, and he brought all his native sweetnesses and gentlenesses and simplicities with him. He was approaching seventeen, a grave and slender lad, trustful, honest, honorable, a creature to love and cling to. And he was incredibly bashful. He was with us a good while, but he could never conquer that peculiarity; he could not be at ease in the presence of any woman, not even in my good and gentle mother’s; and as to speaking to any girl, it was wholly impossible. He sat perfectly still, one day--there were ladies chatting in the room--while a wasp up his leg stabbed him cruelly a dozen times; and all the sign he gave was a slight wince for each stab and the tear of torture in his eye. He was too bashful to move.

It is to this kind that untoward things happen. My sister gave a “candy-pull” on a winter’s night. I was too young to be of the company, and Jim was too diffident. I was sent up to bed early, and Jim followed of his own motion. His room was in the new part of the house and his window looked out on the roof of the L annex. That roof was six inches deep in snow, and the snow had an ice crust upon it which was as slick as glass. Out of the comb of the roof projected a short chimney, a common resort for sentimental cats on moonlight nights--and this was a moonlight night. Down at the eaves, below the chimney, a canopy of dead vines spread away to some posts, making a cozy shelter, and after an hour or two the rollicking crowd of young ladies and gentlemen grouped themselves in its shade, with their saucers of liquid and piping-hot candy disposed about them on the frozen ground to cool. There was joyous chaffing and joking and laughter--peal upon peal of it.

About this time a couple of old, disreputable tomcats got up on the chimney and started a heated argument about something; also about this time I gave up trying to get to sleep and went visiting to Jim’s room. He was awake and fuming about the cats and their intolerable yowling. I asked him, mockingly, why he didn’t climb out and drive them away. He was nettled, and said over-boldly that for two cents he _would_.

It was a rash remark and was probably repented of before it was fairly out of his mouth. But it was too late--he was committed. I knew him; and I knew he would rather break his neck than back down, if I egged him on judiciously.

“O, of course you would! Who’s doubting it?”

It galled him, and he burst out, with sharp irritation, “Maybe _you_ doubt it!”

“I? Oh no! I shouldn’t think of such a thing. You are always doing wonderful things, with your mouth.”

He was in a passion now. He snatched on his yarn socks and began to raise the window, saying in a voice quivering with anger:

“_You_ think I dasn’t--you do! Think what you blame please. I don’t care what you think. I’ll show you!”

The window made him rage; it wouldn’t stay up.

I said, “Never mind, I’ll hold it.”

Indeed, I would have done anything to help. I was only a boy and was already in a radiant heaven of anticipation. He climbed carefully out, clung to the window sill until his feet were safely placed, then began to pick his perilous way on all-fours along the glassy comb, a foot and a hand on each side of it. I believe I enjoy it now as much as I did then: yet it is nearly fifty years ago. The frosty breeze flapped his short shirt about his lean legs; the crystal roof shone like polished marble in the intense glory of the moon; the unconscious cats sat erect upon the chimney, alertly watching each other, lashing their tails and pouring out their hollow grievances; and slowly and cautiously Jim crept on, flapping as he went, the gay and frolicsome young creatures under the vine canopy unaware, and outraging these solemnities with their misplaced laughter. Every time Jim slipped I had a hope; but always on he crept and disappointed it. At last he was within reaching distance. He paused, raised himself carefully up, measured his distance deliberately, then made a frantic grab at the nearest cat--and missed it. Of course he lost his balance. His heels flew up, he struck on his back, and like a rocket he darted down the roof feet first, crashed through the dead vines, and landed in a sitting position in fourteen saucers of red-hot candy, in the midst of all that party--and dressed as _he_ was--this lad who could not look a girl in the face with his clothes on. There was a wild scramble and a storm of shrieks, and Jim fled up the stairs, dripping broken crockery all the way.

From Mark Twain’s _Autobiography_. By permission
of Harper & Brothers, Publishers.

THE HUNTING TRIP

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

They ran down to the Club House the following Saturday afternoon; the local stopping for a brief moment to drop them by the edge of a river without a building in sight. Cousin Jim unlocked a padlocked boat, and they rowed down stream two miles to a small shanty perched on the bank above high water. It was gray dark when they arrived, and an edged wind was searching deliberately across the marshes seeking whom it might shiver. A faint lucent streak in the west was reflected here and there on little pools among the marsh grasses and cat-tails. All the world was flat, except for three cold and naked trees against the sky.

Cousin Jim unlocked the shanty, fumbled about and produced a light.

“Here we are!” he cried cheerfully, “snug as a bug in a rug!” He clattered open a small iron stove and began to fuss with kindlings.

Freeman looked about him with distaste. He had been kicking himself ever since his rash acceptance. The affair had not one redeeming feature: he doubted whether he had even made the desired impression on Mattie. It was cold, it looked dirty, there were no feline comforts whatever; and Freeman could see no point in going out on that exposed bleak march for the sake of shooting at a few silly ducks! However, he was in for it, and he had to go through with it. He had no thought, however, of making the best of it. He much preferred to look upon himself as an injured martyr deprived of the essential comforts for inadequate reasons. The indulgence of this point of view manifested itself externally in silence. But as Freeman had never been what you would call chatty with Cousin Jim, nobody but an expert would have detected anything unusual.

Cousin Jim apparently was no expert. He seemed full of spirits and anticipation, and chattered away about directions of the wind and northern flights and different “holes” very cheerfully as he fussed about the iron stove. In a short time he announced supper; and Freeman discovered he was supposed to consider ham and eggs and thick slices of bread and butter and a cup of strong coffee an adequate meal! Cousin Jim had cooked a dozen eggs and seemed mildly solicitous that Freeman did not eat his six.

“You’ll need to stoke up,” he urged. “It’s going to be colder than Billy-be-damned in the morning. I really ought to have brought some pie,” he added.

After supper Cousin Jim occupied the time very happily--for himself--in getting out and stowing in a boat innumerable wooden ducks, and examining the strings and weights attached to them; in arranging shotgun shells in a tin box; in rummaging out from untidy corners various brush knives, shell extractors, paddles, punt poles, and the like. Concerning each of these items he discoursed at length and cheerfully. Finally, he dug up some disreputable old canvas coats and rubber boots. Cousin Jim was supplying the whole outfit, necessarily, including the guns.

“There!” he announced at last, turning a beaming face to his unresponsive guest. “All set! Now we’d better turn in.”

Freeman stepped outside. The marsh was flat and black now; the wind searched through his thin clothing, through his shrinking flesh to his very bones. He came back shivering.

“Wind’s north,” remarked Cousin Jim, “it’s liable to turn cold by morning. That’ll bring ’em in!”

The final affront of the occasion was when Freeman found that he was to sleep between blankets without sheets. He had never done such a thing in his life: furthermore, he had never heard of such a thing. He doubted if it could be done. Every fastidious instinct shrank from the harsh contact. He reflected resentfully that he would not be able to sleep a wink. He hated the whole silly business. He began almost to hate Cousin Jim; he was so exuberantly cheerful.

III

He was quite sure he hated Cousin Jim when the latter haled him forth the following morning. Nobody had ever before in the world’s history been up at such an hour--unless he had stayed up all night. The north wind seemed to have fulfilled its promise. It was cold--or worse. Freeman had revised his hatred of the sheetless blankets: they had become friends. How he dreaded leaving this warm nest! Why you could see your breath! What an ass he had been to leave his comfortable quarters at home to undertake this crazy expedition. Sport!

Ham and eggs and thick bread and butter and coffee for breakfast. Freeman, unaccustomed to eating at this hour, could hardly choke any of it down. Cousin Jim made sandwiches, also of thick bread and butter and ham and eggs, and wrapped them in newspapers. He had not much to say but he was busy and cheerful and whistled. Freeman hated anybody to be cheerful so early in the morning.

They put on thick garments and stepped out into the darkness. Lord, it was cold! The sweaters and canvas coats turned the wind, but the keen air nipped Freeman’s ears and fingers, and made the inside of his nose feel positively raw. He took his place in the boat and humped over in a dumb sort of endurance. Cousin Jim, quite superfluously, warned him not to talk. He had no desire to talk. If he had anything at all to say it was to curse himself for getting into this uncomfortable fix.

Cousin Jim paddled for a time; then turned sharp to the right. After a moment he laid aside the paddle and took up a long pole with which he began to push strongly. Freeman could see nothing. He wondered how Cousin Jim knew when to turn, and by what knowledge or instinct he had so accurately hit the narrow channel through which they were now making their way.

This wonder was the first break in his self-absorption. The next was also a wonder; as to the fact that he was standing it after all. It was too early for any sane man to be up, it was bitterly cold, his position in the cranky duck boat was cramped and one of his feet had gone to sleep: but it had not yet proved fatal. A very faint pride stirred within him. These Arctic fellows became understandable. Probably no one in the world’s history had ever been so cold and miserable. But as long as he was in for it and had to go through with it--and he was going through with it--he found it commendable that he was doing so well. He was glad now he had inhibited a vigorous wail the general awfulness of the situation had tempted him to utter.

Freeman had firmly made up his mind that he was going to endure the experience; but never again! The entire day was going to be devoted to endurance. Nevertheless, here was one thing that had broken in to share his consciousness. Soon came another.

In the east a faint light had been slowly growing. It had not seemed to affect the darkness, yet in some manner indeterminate gray objects grew into visibility. The reed-grown banks of the channel through which they were poling began to be dimly perceptible: there was a glint on the water of tiny ponds to right and left: an horizon was defined. This half-light increased. The ponds and waterways became almost plain. One found himself in a world of multiplying details. And from all about came splashings, quackings, the roar of rising wings, the overhead whistle of departing wings. It seemed incredible that one could not see their owners, they were so loud and so near, and the light was by contrast with the draining night so strong. Freeman, in spite of his determination to be miserable, felt the stirrings of a faint excitement.

The boat turned into a pond. Cousin Jim dropped overboard one by one his wooden ducks, then rushed the craft into the reeds. He busied himself with the latter for a moment; upturned a box to sit on.

“Load your gun,” he instructed Freeman in a low voice. “We’re just about in time.”

There ensued a period of waiting while the light grew. In that period Freeman’s miseries returned on him. His watch told him it was six o’clock: his body told him it was even colder than he had thought; his anticipation showed him an interminable vista of minutes to be passed one by one. He was entirely encased within his own shell.

Something sudden dragged him out. He had a startling impression of the whistling rush of something swift in the air, of a bulk rising, of two shattering impacts. The fact was a flock of ducks had come in to the decoys; Cousin Jim had got to his feet; and had shot twice. Now as he was opening the breech of his gun he spoke in his ordinary voice.

“Why didn’t you shoot?” he was asking.

Freeman could not very well tell the whole truth and say he had not shot because he had been suffering so cruelly. So he muttered a half-truth about not having seen them. But the incident caused him again to look outside himself.

He saw that the daylight had flooded the world: that the marsh stretched away interminably brown; that the sky was gray streaked with slate: that the little pond was ruffled by skurrying cats-paws and that the wooden ducks were bobbing solemnly at the ends of their lines. Then Cousin Jim produced a queer instrument of wood and nickle, a little bigger than a cigar, and began to talk duck on it. Freeman could see nothing, but from somewhere came a whistle of wings, which died away. After a moment Cousin Jim stopped talking duck and turned his face to Freeman.

“Mallards,” he said. “They’re wise old birds. You must have moved your head when they were circling right above us. You’ve got to hold absolutely rigid until they turn in over the decoys.”

He spoke kindly and cheerfully; but Freeman felt a touch of reproach. Shortly Cousin Jim resumed talking duck. Freeman stared at the decoys through the interstices of the reeds. Suddenly from nowhere another flock materialized. They were low above the marsh, headed straight for the blind, their wings set. The direction of flight was so squarely toward the shooters that Freeman perceived with satisfaction that no calculation would be required for the shot: he could just hold right at them, like shooting at a paper on a fence. He had handled a shotgun a very little, but he was not a hunter.

“Let ’em have it!” muttered Cousin Jim.

Freeman arose to his feet, prepared to pulverize the two leaders. The instant the two men showed, the entire flight translated the momentum of their horizontal approach into a climb straight up. It is what an aeroplane does when it _zooms_. In addition every duck added his own duck power to the effort. They “towered,” as sportsmen have it; and until you have seen it you can never imagine how fast and how far a duck can tower while you are winking an eye. Instead of being able to shoot as he would at stationary targets, Freeman was flustered by wildly scattering and escaping elusiveness. He banged away lustily, and of course missed both barrels.

“Get any?” queried Cousin Jim, blowing the black powder smoke from his gun.

“No: missed,” replied Freeman shortly. He had heard two lovely splashes from Cousin’s Jim side of the flock.

“Too bad: better luck next time,” said the latter.

Now, as has been said, Freeman was no sort of a shot: he had never had the practice to become so. But no youth ever likes to admit himself a duffer at anything. Freeman began to glow with a dull resentful anger at the situation; and with the anger began to grow a determination. He would show them!

However, three more flocks came in, and Freeman showed nobody anything. Twice he missed, and once he forgot to cock his gun! Those were the days before hammerless pieces, of course. He tugged away at the trigger until he felt black in the face. It was very mortifying to a sensitive soul. Cousin Jim seemed to make nothing of these catastrophes; killed his ducks with cheerful regularity; and seemed to be having a good time. Freeman became actually bitter. The whole thing was too silly for words.

A fourth flock came in, and _four_ splashes followed the roar of the guns. Freeman had killed a pair!

“Good shot,” commented Cousin Jim. “Landed them nicely.” Something happened inside Freeman; something analogous to hot sun on a misty meadow, or a wind on a fog-bound sea. He had killed two ducks: and he thought he knew just how he had killed them. You threw your aim at the body, and then swung your muzzle up and pulled trigger just as the head disappeared from view. He discovered in himself an intense eagerness for the next lot to come in, so he could try again. The blood was singing through his body. No longer did he feel cold or disgruntled. Also he wanted to be chatty; which shows that those two ducks had stirred Freeman up considerably. Minnie would not have known her darling brother had she been able at that moment to see his inner self accurately depicted in outward semblance. The latter manifestation would have been that of a blithe and skiptious person who would have worn his hat on one side of his head.

More ducks came in from time to time, and Freeman had a chance to test his theories. It is only in romantic fiction that the hero wins the football match or licks the champion or cops off the million in Wall Street without knowing a thing about football, boxing, or finance. The idea was perfect; but ducks seemed to have no notion of regularity or standardization. They never acted the same way twice running. Still, out of a good many shots he did scratch down a few. One of the great compensations in life is the fact that the glow from a successful shot lasts a poor marksman longer than it does a good one. And a casual remark of Cousin Jim’s supplied the one missing ingredient. After the fifth duck had fallen to Freeman’s lavish burnt offering of black powder he said:

“Pity you haven’t your own gun. There’s nothing that throws a man off worse than shooting a strange gun, is there?” He seemed to speak as one expert to another.

Freeman’s imagination, turned agile by the necessity of making this extraordinary slaughter quite theoretically perfect, seized upon the thought. Of course: couldn’t expect him to do himself justice with a strange gun! In fact, considering that he was shooting a strange gun, he was doing rather remarkably well! It is to be doubted if there were many other duck shots, shooting a strange gun, who could equal this! This aforementioned imagination merely neglected as unimportant the fact that any gun whatever would be strange to Freeman.

The flight slackened. There were long intervals when there were no birds in the sky. Cousin Jim remarked that it was too dinged warm for the best shooting. Two hours before Freeman would probably have meditated killing Cousin Jim for making that remark.

“Yes,” he said now, wisely, “and it looked last night as though that north wind would bring a cold snap.”

“Well, we’ll smoke and keep our weather eye open; and there’ll be the afternoon flight, anyway,” was Cousin Jim’s decision. “It’s sort of pretty out here on the marsh, anyway.”

They sat and smoked and ate relishingly the sandwiches made of thick bread and butter and ham and eggs. Freeman assented to the proposition that grub certainly tasted good out here. No one would have known Freeman. In the contagion of Cousin Jim’s extreme youth he had become quite a boy about it all. He followed up Cousin Jim’s remark about the marsh being pretty by discovering all sorts of compositions in the landscape. He pointed them out. This was a new one on Cousin Jim. Freeman became absorbed in making him see the various little pictures that could be composed by isolating certain bits from the whole. The isolating had to be done with an eye for the distribution of masses. Cousin Jim was vastly interested and could not get over his astonishment.

“I’ve been coming down to this marsh off and on for near twenty-five years,” said he, “and I’ve always thought it was pretty--it is sort of wide and wild and lonesome--but I never thought it had so many little pictures in it!”

“And colour,” supplemented Freeman. He somehow was as pleased as punch over having impressed Cousin Jim, whose opinion yesterday had been negligible. “What’s its colour?”

“Why, brown.”

“Turn your head upside down and look.”

Cousin Jim gravely inverted.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he cried.

“All kinds of colours, aren’t there? Lilac, and purple, and pearl, and pink--all sorts.”

“It’s like magic,” said Cousin Jim. “How do you explain that?”

“Oh, it’s just that when you look at it upside down you eliminate the form of things and see only the colour. Your attention is not divided.”

“_Swish!_--_swish!_ A flock of swift teal had darted down and flashed away again. Cousin Jim laughed.

“We better get on the job,” said he.

They stayed out until the early dusk, returning only just in time to catch the local train back. In the smoking car Freeman was no longer silent. In fact, he talked a blue streak; and his conversation was of the shots he had made and why, and the shots he had not made and why not. Of course a fellow shooting a strange gun----

IV

Freeman had promised Cousin Jim, and himself, that he would go duck hunting again--and had meant it. This was in the first glow, but the first glow died. The discomforts gradually came to be uppermost in his mind. He began to look back on the excellence of his endurance with a little wonder and considerable pride. But he shrank from its repetition. There was no doubt that he had enjoyed the experience, but unless fairly forced into it by circumstances he would never voluntarily pay so much in feline comfort for that kind of enjoyment. The unaccustomed struggle made it not worth while. He had always overindulged his body, and now he could not fight it. Never did he abandon the fiction that he wanted to go duck hunting again, but was prevented by untoward circumstances from accepting the invitations; and always he clung tenaciously to the prideful pose of one who hunted ducks on incredibly cold mornings and made nothing of it. But he did not go again.

Cousin Jim was sorry for this. Whenever Freeman’s name came up for discussion Cousin Jim thenceforward took pains to say that he was not so bad after all, if he would only give himself a chance. Even when the occasion was in the nature of a praise meeting for Freeman, Cousin Jim made this remark; which Freeman’s friends resented as uncalled for. Nevertheless, somehow, Cousin Jim seemed to consider Freeman’s mere existence required some sort of defense or explanation, and he was always glad to offer it.

From _The Glory Hole_ by Stewart Edward White.
Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Company.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF INCIDENTS

The editors have found these additional selections very useful in
teaching the writing of incidents:

Byrne, Donn. _Messer Marco Polo_, Chapter I. The Century Company.

Goldsmith, Oliver. _The Vicar of Wakefield_, Chapter XIV, _Fresh
Mortifications_.

Hémon, Louis. _Maria Chapdelaine_, Chapter IX, _One Thousand Aves_.
The Macmillan Company.

Hudson, W. H. _Far Away and Long Ago_, Chapter III, _The Death of
an Old Dog_. E. P. Dutton & Company.

Wiggin, Kate Douglas. _A Child’s Journey with Dickens_ in _My
Garden of Memory_. Houghton Mifflin Company.