II. On his death bed he calls them about him and gives them some small sticks, asking them if they can break them. The sons readily break them.
III. The old man ties them together tightly and asks his sons again to break them.
IV. They all try in every possible way, but cannot.
V. The old man says that if they will agree among themselves, they will be like the sticks bound together; but if they separate in quarrels, any one can injure them.
1. An ass laden with salt falls down in a stream; before he can rise the salt is dissolved away and his load is much lighter. The next time he crosses the stream he stumbles purposely and falls, but this time he is laden with sponges.
2. Two thieves who had stolen a horse fall to quarreling over who shall have the animal. While they are rolling in the dust fighting, a third thief comes along, jumps on the horse, and makes off with it.
3. An oak speaks contemptuously to a reed of its small size and yielding weakness, and boasts of its own strength and firmness. After a terrible storm the oak is blown down and the reed straightens itself unhurt.
4. A bat is caught by a weasel, who is about to devour it because it is so much like a mouse. The bat says, "I am not a mouse—you are mistaken—I am a bird. See my wings." Later the bat is caught again by a boy who wants to put it in a bird cage. "I am no bird—see my mouse's body." Thus the bat twice saves its life.
5. A cat was changed by magic to a woman. All went well until she saw a mouse run across the floor, when she ran after it and caught it.
6. A wolf in eating rapidly had swallowed a bone, which stuck in his throat. He went to the stork, who pulled it out with her beak, and then asked for pay for the service. The wolf said the stork could consider herself lucky that she had not had her head bitten off.
7. A weasel slipped into a barn through a small hole. There he ate so much grain that he was too fat to go out at the same hole, and was caught by the farmer.
8. The ass, seeing how much petting a little dog gets, tries to imitate its ways, prances about, and attempts to lie down at the feet of his mistress. He is driven back to the stable.
9. A sheep, going away for the day, cautions her little lambs not to open the door to any one, except to her, and she will say Mariati, so that they will recognize her. A wolf, hidden near, overhears the password, knocks on the door, and gives the right word; but the lambs, to be doubly sure, ask to see what color feet he has. They are black and betray him, so that the door is not opened.
56. Autobiography.—There is one form of narration where it is almost impossible to get the events of your story in the wrong order, and that is autobiography, for in this you are telling the facts of your own life as they occurred, from month to month or year to year. In this form, as in narration, however, there is an important principle to bear in mind. Your material must be well chosen; that is, you must select only the important events in your life. Trivial and uninteresting details must be left out. To do this you must use your judgment, and try to put yourself in the place of your reader, and think what he would like to know. (If your great-grandfather had written his autobiography when he was your age, what would you have liked to know of his life? If Pocohontas had written her autobiography, what would most interest you?)
Exercise 93.—I. Write your own autobiography up to the present date, and then continue in the same style, telling the story of your life as you would like best to have it.
II. Write an imaginary autobiography of:—
1. The starch-box after it was empty; a boy made a doll's wagon of it for his little sister. Forgotten in the street, it was picked up by two poor children, and taken home, where an invalid brother made it into a window box for flowers.
2. A gold dollar. Stamped in the mint, sent to the bank, given to a child for a birthday present, sent by her to the missionaries in Africa, lost there, and hung around the neck of a little black child.
3. A drop of rain—all its life from the cloud to the earth, to the brook, to the river, to the sea, back to the cloud again.
4. A knife. Made by Indian hunters, bought by white trappers, used on the plains, slipped into a package of furs sent to Paris to be made up into coats, and then used as a paper-cutter.
5. Similarly, invent stories for a handkerchief, a diamond, a doll, a knapsack, a book, a street car, a lamp, a sword, a tea kettle, a wagon, an old house, a dollar bill, a pencil, a mirror, an old apple tree, a thimble, a high tortoise-shell comb, a saddle, a suit of armor, a chair.
III. Write autobiographies of a cat, a dog, a horse, an elephant, a polar bear, a fox, a rabbit, a canary bird, a hen, a trained pig, a poodle, a mouse, a woodchuck, a squirrel.
IV. Write the account of the course of a river as told by itself, from the time it rises from a spring till it flows into the ocean.
V. Write the autobiography of any statue that you know, from the block of marble to its present place.
57. Biography.—In writing a biography it is not enough to select your facts with good judgment, and to arrange them in the order of their occurrence. A still more careful arrangement is needed, and this is usually provided for by grouping the facts of a life into several main divisions. For instance, in writing your mother's biography, you might make some such general division or outline as the following:—
I. Childhood in New England—village school; on a farm.
II. Boarding-school life. Studies—beginning of interest in history. Visits to school friends in the vacation. The old home is destroyed by fire.
III. Life in New York, as teacher of history in a private school. Summer abroad with several of the pupils.
IV. Early married life in New York; boarding-house, later a small apartment.
V. Removal to suburban town. Children of the family. General character of family life.