“Not always was the Kangaroo as now we behold him, but a Different Animal with four short legs.”
—From “Old Man Kangaroo”: Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling.
“Whichever way I turn,” said the weather-cock on a high steeple, “no one is satisfied.”
—From “Fireside Fables,” Edwin Barrow.
“A set of chessmen, left standing on their board, resolved to alter the rules of the game.”
—From the same source.
“The Pink Parasol had tender whalebone ribs and a slender stick of cherry-wood.”
—From “Very Short Stories,” Mrs. W. K. Clifford.
“There was once a poor little Donkey on Wheels; it had never wagged its tail, or tossed its head, or said ‘Hee-haw,’ or tasted a tender thistle.”
—From the same source.
Now, some of these beginnings are, of course, for very young children, but they all have the same advantage, that of plunging in medias res, and therefore are able to arrest attention at once, as distinct from the stories which open on a leisurely note of description.
In the same way we must be careful about the endings of the stories; in some way or other they must impress themselves either in a very dramatic climax to which the whole story has worked up, such as we have in the following:
“Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods, or up the Wet Wild Trees, or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his Wild Tail, and walking by his Wild Lone.”
—From “Just So Stories,” Rudyard Kipling.