The poem describes a fight between two ships, the French ship, Téméraire, and the English ship, Quebec. The English ship was destroyed by fire; Farmer, the captain, was killed, and the officers take prisoners:
They dealt with us as brethren, they mourned for Farmer dead,
And as the wounded captives passed each Breton bowed the head.
Then spoke the French lieutenant:
"'Twas the fire that won, not we.
You never struck your flag to us; You'll go to England free."[41]
'Twas the sixth day of October, seventeen hundred seventy-nine,
A year when nations ventured against us to combine,
Quebec was burned and Farmer slain, by us remembered not;
But thanks be to the French book wherein they're not forgot.
And you, if you've got to fight the French, my youngster, bear in mind
Those seamen of King Louis so chivalrous and kind;
Think of the Breton gentlemen who took our lads to Brest,
And treat some rescued Breton as a comrade and a guest.
But in all our stories, in order to produce desired effects we must refrain from holding, as Burroughs says, "a brief for either side," and we must let the people in the story be judged by their deeds and leave the decision of the children free in this matter.[42]
In a review of Ladd's "Psychology" in the Academy, we find a passage which refers as much to the story as to the novel:
"The psychological novelist girds up his loins and sets himself to write little essays on each of his characters. If he have the gift of the thing he may analyze motives with a subtlety which is more than their desert, and exhibit simple folk passing through the most dazzling rotations. If he be a novice, he is reduced to mere crude invention —the result in both cases is quite beyond the true purpose of Art. Art—when all is said and done—is a suggestion, and it refuses to be explained. Make it obvious, unfold it in detail, and you reduce it to a dead letter."
Again, there is a sentence by Schopenhauer applied to novels which would apply equally well to stories:
"Skill consists in setting the inner life in motion with the smallest possible array of circumstances, for it is this inner life that excites our interest."
In order to produce an encouraging and lasting effect by means of our stories, we should be careful to introduce a certain number from fiction where virtue is rewarded and vice punished, because to appreciate the fact that "virtue is its own reward" it takes a developed and philosophic mind, or a born saint, of whom there will not, I think, be many among normal children: a comforting fact, on the whole, as the normal teacher is apt to confuse them with prigs.