I. The Incident
Definition
The word "incident" comes from the Latin and means "falling upon or into something, impinging from without;" hence something depending upon or contained in another thing, as its principal. In narrative, then, it is the record of a subordinate act or of an event happening at the same time as some other event and of less importance. Any little occurrence may be considered an incident. The report of it generally has excuse for being in the fact that knowledge of it throws light on the main event or intensifies interest therein. Accordingly every good narrative of this type possesses a horizon larger than itself. Somewhere within the story there is a clause connecting the event with other occurrences or with the prime occurrence.
How to tell an incident
An incident may or may not be an eye-witness account. Indeed, an incident may be told by a person removed the third, the hundredth degree from the happening. The essential thing is the evidence of reality. Of course there are fictitious incidents—like those in "Robinson Crusoe"—but the whole care of the writer in such cases is to simulate truth. Very often a work of fiction is but a skillful piecing together of actual small happenings. An incident is valued in itself for one of two reasons—either for the fact which it records or for the author's humanity revealed in the narration. Though slight, an incident should be well told. It need not be pointed, but it should proceed in an orderly and interesting fashion. The diction should be natural. As hinted before, an incident should have a setting. The reader ought to be able to feel something of where the characters have come from and whither they are going. The more nicely such a coherence is suggested, the more pleasing the little story will be.
One thinks of the quiet delightfulness of Wordsworth's Incidents which he calls "Poems on the Naming of Places." They are small stories out of his life and the lives of his friends—natural records out of natural living, but as charming and interesting as any tale of
"Naiad by the side
Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere,
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance."
Robert Browning's "Incident of the French Camp" is an example of the more stirring small happening. Books of travel are largely series of incidents, but because of the continued presence of the same personality fall into a class distinct from this. Good letter-writers are usually fascinating relators of incidents. Cowper, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Dorothy Osborne, Gray, Lowell, Edward Fitzgerald, charmed not only their correspondents but all their later readers. The earlier accounts of his life away from home that "R. L. S." sent back to his mother contain exquisite small bits of narration.
A Near Tragedy
A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was under sail, but making, as will appear, no great way, a kitten, one of four of the feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into the water: an alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then upon deck, and received it with the utmost concern. He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favor of the poor thing, as he called it; the sails were instantly slackened, and all hands, as the phrase is, employed to recover the poor animal. I was, I own, extremely surprised at all this; less, indeed, at the captain's extreme tenderness, than at his conceiving any possibility of success; for, if puss had had nine thousand instead of nine lives, I concluded they had been all lost. The boatswain, however, had more sanguine hopes; for, having stript himself of his jacket, breeches, and shirt, he leapt boldly into the water, and, to my great astonishment, in a few minutes, returned to the ship, bearing the motionless animal in his mouth. Nor was this, I observed, a matter of such great difficulty as it appeared to my ignorance, and possibly may seem to that of my fresh-water readers: the kitten was now exposed to air and sun on the deck, where its life, of which it retained no symptoms, was despaired of by all.
The captain's humanity, if I may so call it, did not so totally destroy his philosophy as to make him yield himself up to affliction on this melancholy occasion. Having felt his loss like a man, he resolved to show he could bear it like one; and, having declared he had rather have lost a cask of rum or brandy, betook himself to thrashing at backgammon with the Portuguese friar, in which innocent amusement they passed nearly all their leisure hours.
But as I have, perhaps, a little too wantonly endeavored to raise the tender passions of my readers in this narrative, I should think myself unpardonable if I concluded it without giving them the satisfaction of hearing that the kitten at last recovered, to the great joy of the good captain; but to the great disappointment of some of the sailors, who asserted that the drowning a cat was the very surest way of raising a favorable wind: a supposition of which, though we have heard several plausible accounts, we will not presume to assign the true original reason.
—Henry Fielding.
"Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon."
Birds Divulge Army Secrets
During the night, before the battle of Sadowa, an Austrian division commanded by the archduke, retreating before the Prussian army, had bivouacked near a town in Bohemia, facing north, says Sir Evelyn Wood, in the London Gazette.
At midnight the archduke, when resting in a peasant's cottage, was awakened by the arrival of a gypsy, having come to report the advance of the enemy.
The archduke, who spoke Romany fluently, asked: "How do you know? Our outposts have not reported any movement."
"That, your highness, is because the enemy is some way off."
"Then how do you know?"
The gypsy, pointing to the dark sky, lighted by the moon, observed: "You see those birds flying over the woods from north to south?"
"Yes; what of them?"
"Those birds do not fly by night unless disturbed, and the direction of their flight indicates that the enemy is coming this way."
The archduke put his division under arms and reinforced the outposts, which in two hours' time were heavily attacked.
An Incident Related In a Letter
7:20 P. M.—I must tell you a thing I saw to-day. I was going down to Portobello in the train, when there came into the next compartment (third-class) an artisan, strongly marked with smallpox, and with sunken, heavy eyes—a face hard and unkind, and without anything lovely. There was a woman on the platform seeing him off. At first sight, with her one eye blind and the whole cast of her features strongly plebeian, and even vicious, she seemed as unpleasant as the man; but there was something beautifully soft, a sort of light of tenderness, as on some Dutch Madonna, that came over her face when she looked at the man. They talked for a while together through the window; the man seemed to have been asking for money. "Ye ken the last time," she said, "I gave ye two shillings for your lodgin', and ye said—"it died off in a whisper. Plainly Falstaff and Dame Quickly over again. The man laughed unpleasantly, even cruelly, and said something; and the woman turned her back on the carriage and stood a long while so, and, do what I might, I could catch no glimpse of her expression, although I thought I saw the heave of a sob in her shoulders. At last, after the train was already in motion, she turned and put two shillings into his hand. I saw her stand and look after us with a perfect heaven of love on her face—this poor one-eyed Madonna—until the train was out of sight; but the man, sordidly happy with his gains, did not put himself to the inconvenience of one glance to thank her for her ill-deserved kindness.
—Robert Louis Stevenson.
In letter to Mrs. Stillwell, Sept. 16, 1873.
A Hero Dead
It was very dark in the east corridor of the Armory, and, save for the quiet footfall of the ever-watchful orderly, there was no sound in the silent room where the nation's dead lay wrapped in the great silk flag. In the shadow of the stairway, a group of secret-service men were nervously whispering among themselves, with occasional glances that strove to penetrate the black void that lay beyond the crape-hung doorway.
Their sergeant stood a little apart from the others, an alert figure, with a hand that lingered suggestively about his hip-pocket. For three days he had kept unwearied watch while thousands had paid their last homage to the dead servant of the people, and the strain was telling upon him. The nation had lost a hero, but John MacDonald had lost his idol—and his best friend. Through his mind was sweeping a strong revulsion at conditions which could have fostered so wanton a murder; and a sudden and passionate hatred of the dark race to whose salvation this man had been a martyr threatened almost to unman this stern son of the service. That very day he had sent away with a curse a paralytic old negro who had brought his handful of field-lilies to the bier of the savior of his race. MacDonald had felt no qualm at his action, and when, later, he had found the poor flowers lying withered outside the closed door, he kicked them aside with an oath. In a measure, the stern old Scotchman had not been responsible for his actions at that time, for it was just then that he had heard the dread rumor which was spreading its dark wake through the crapehung corridors. That very night while the whole nation was yet bowed in its sorrow, an attempt was to be made to steal the body of the dead hero. The crime seemed scarcely to be believed, but the men of the secret-service, scattered throughout the dark corridor, were awake and ready.
John MacDonald, striving vainly in his grief-saddened heart to frame a reason for it all, wondered how he had been able to resist the old negro with his tear-wet face and pleading voice. That black creature was a man like himself, and he, also, had loved the great man who was lying so quietly in the folds of his country's flag. "O Lincoln," he spoke, raising a clenched hand toward the black doorway, "they have murdered you, they have taken you from us, but still—" Suddenly his muscles stiffened, and something very akin to a chill crept about the roots of his hair. There had come the quiet but unmistakable sound of a footfall from the room where the dead lay. The Scotchman stood a man of stone, and while his very hair stiffened with horror, a mighty wrath swept over his whole being. They were at it, then, those fiends who dared to desecrate the body of his lord with their filthy touch. With a movement like a cat, MacDonald drew his ready weapon, and, with a call to his startled subordinates, stepped boldly over the threshold.
In a moment, the room was filled with the glare of torches, and the secret-service men, crowding in the doorway, saw the leveled weapon of their chief sink inertly to his side.
On the black catafalque the hero lay, beneath the outstretched wings of the eagle of the republic, and at his feet, sobbing out his grief-stricken heart, knelt an old negro.
—Ida Treat.
My First Day at School
The room was not large enough for a schoolroom. The floor, the wall, and the roof were all made of bamboo. In the center of the room was a long, narrow, roughly-made table, at which sat closely twenty or thirty pupils. There were also two or three benches here and there, on which sat new boys and girls. At the end of the long table sat a rather old but fierce-looking man, the schoolmaster. In his left hand he held a book, and in his right, a whip; for at that time the principle governing schools was that knowledge could not be gained without severe bodily punishment.
When I entered the schoolroom, my "cartilla" in hand, this was the first scene that met my eyes. It happened that Titay, a cousin of mine, had been sent to school on that day also; so we had the same lesson. In harsh tones the teacher ordered us to study the vowels of the Spanish alphabet. And with a loud voice we repeated again and again, a, e, i, o, u, until we knew them—at least we thought so—by heart.
At last our turn came; and we were called to go to our teacher. My cousin (a girl) was at his left side, while I was at his right.
"What is this?" the teacher asked my cousin.
"A," she answered, correctly.
However, at his second, third, and fourth questions, she was confused and could not answer. But I really knew "a, e, i, o, u," by heart, for my kind mother had taught them to me; so I proudly corrected every mistake she had made. After every correction, the teacher would say to me, "Tira la oreja" (meaning, "Pull her ears"). And with what boyish pleasure did I pull her ears! She cried and resolved never to go to school again.
When I returned home, I was very boastful, and told everybody in the household of my triumph. Thus I received encouragement in my first school day, and after that I continued to study with interest till I myself received some bodily punishment.
—Máximo M. Kalaw.
The Guinatan Prize
One day I came to the schoolhouse tardy. When I entered the door, I saw the pupils standing side by side in a row and facing the teacher. There was one column of numbers on the blackboard, near which the teacher stood with a long wooden pointer in his hand. As soon as I saw the numbers on the board, I knew at once that there would be a contest. So I laid down my books on the floor, took off my hat, and stood next to the last boy.
"Teacher, Leopoldo does not belong here. He is the captain-general. Therefore, he should stand next to Federico," said the last boy as soon as he saw me.
"No," said the teacher, "he came in tardy. Boys, you must learn to come to school on time," he continued.
The teacher then gave us names: he named the first boy general, the second major-general, the third captain-general, and so on. I, being the last boy, was named ranchero, or the cook of the army.
"He who is the general at the end of the contest will be given a cup of guinatan as a prize," said the teacher.
"Now begin, Martin," he continued. Martin began to add the numbers on the board with accuracy, and finished within forty seconds. The major-general did the same, but he finished within forty-five seconds. The captain-general added the numbers within forty-two seconds. So he pulled the ear of the major-general, and they exchanged places. Before, my turn came, there had been many changes already, a soldier had beaten a colonel, a sergeant had passed a lieutenant.
"All right, Leopoldo," said the teacher.
"One—six—fourteen—twenty-two—thirty—thirty-six—forty-five. Carry four. Eight—ten—fifteen—twenty-one—twenty-nine—thirty-five—forty!" I said without stopping to take a breath.
"Forty seconds!" announced the teacher.
The teacher wanted to try me again, but the boys said they should like to hear the general first.
"All right. Go on, Martin," said the teacher.
This time Martin failed. He finished within thirty-seven seconds, but he made a mistake. The boys shouted.
Fortunately, the time was up. So I was pronounced the victor. The teacher bought a cup of guinatan, the sweet fruit mixture that Filipino children so much love, and gave it to me. I was very proud then. When I reached home, I told my mother all that had happened. She was very happy.
—Leopoldo Faustino.