TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF EMOTION OR SENTIMENT
“A Doctor of The Old School,” Ian Maclaren, in The Days of Auld Lang Syne.
“A Descent into the Maelstrom,” Edgar Allan Poe, in Tales.
“The Duchess at Prayer,” Edith Wharton, in Crucial Instances.
“A Lear of the Steppes,” Ivan Turgeneff, translated in The Book of The Short-Story. Jessup and Canby.
“The Death of the Dauphin,” Alphonse Daudet, translated in Little French Masterpieces.
“The Birthmark,” Nathaniel Hawthorne, in Mosses From an Old Manse.
“Tennessee’s Partner,” Bret Harte, in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Stories.
“The Death of Olivier Becaille,” Émile Zola, translated in Masterpieces of Fiction.
“They,” Rudyard Kipling, in Traffic and Discoveries.
“Juggler to ‘Our Lady,’” Anatole France, in Short-Story Masterpieces.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Emotion is a broad word loosely used to embrace all the tones of inner feeling, from the palest sentiment depicted by a Jane Austen, to the darkest passion of a Werther.—Writing the Short-Story, p. 181, which see for a fuller discussion of emotion in the short-story.
[21] “S’il tient sa langue, il tient la clé qui de ses chaînes le délivre.”—Frederic Mistral, a poet friend of Daudet’s.
[22] Note.—Any good psychology is likely to help you understand the nature of emotion in general.
IV
HUMOROUS STORIES
The Ransom of Red Chief.—O. Henry
The Courting of T’Nowhead’s Bell.—J. M. Barrie
Sydney Smith uses this word [humor] to cover any thing that is ridiculous and laughable. So the epithet comic is quite indiscriminately applied. But we ought not to submit to this loose application; for there are plenty of other words to make proper distinctions for us amid our pleasurable moods, and permit us to reserve humor for something which is neither punning, wit, satire, nor comedy. Humor may avail itself of all these mental exercises, but only as a manager casts his stock company to set forth the prevailing spirit of a play. Comedy, for instance, represents sorrows, passions, and annoyances, but shows them without the sombre purpose of tragedy to enforce a supreme will at any cost. All our weaknesses threaten in comedy to result in serious embarrassments, but there is such inexhaustible material for laughter in the whims and follies with which we baffle ourselves and others, that the tragic threat is collared just in time and shaken into pleasure. All kinds of details of our life are represented, which tragedy could never tolerate in its main drift towards the pathos of defeated human wills and broken hearts. Tricks, vices, fatuities, crotchets, vanities, play their game for a stake no higher than the mirth of outwitting each other; and they all pay penalties of a light kind which God exacts smilingly for the sake of keeping our disorders at a minimum. Comedy also finds a great deal of its charm in the unconsciousness of an infirmity. We exhibit ourselves unawares: each one is perfectly understood by everybody but himself; so we plot and vapor through an intrigue with placards on each back, where all but the wearers can indulge their mirth at seeing us parading so innocently with advertisements of our price and quality.—John Weiss, Wit, Humor, and Shakespeare.