IV
STORY-TELLING AS AN ART
Different Ways of Story-telling.—The Slow Story-teller.—Lincoln’s Stories.—Bad Telling of Good Stories.—The Right Way to Tell a Story.—The Humorous, the Comic and the Witty Story.—Artemus Ward, Robert J. Burdette and Mark Twain as Story-tellers.
The ways of story-tellers differ almost as widely and strangely as the ways of politicians—or women—yet every man’s way is the best and only one to him. I know men who consume so much time in unloading a story that they remind me of a ship-captain who had just taken a pilot and was anxious to get into port. The pilot knew all the channels and shoals of the vicinity, and being a cautious old chap he wasn’t going to take any risks, so he backed and filled and crisscrossed so many times that the captain growled: “Hang him! He needs the Whole Atlantic Ocean to turn around in.”
Yet a lot of these long-winded story-tellers “get there”—and they deserve to, not only because a hearty laugh follows, but because hard work deserves its reward. As to that, Abraham Lincoln, long before he became president, and when time was of no consequence, had some stories almost as long as old-fashioned sermons; but nobody left his seat by the stove at the country store, or his leaning place at the post-office, or his chair on the hotel piazza until “Abe” had reached the point. But there never was more than one Abraham Lincoln. To-day a long-winded story-teller can disperse a crowd about as quickly as a man with a bad case of smallpox.
But it isn’t always length that troubles the listener—the way in which a tale is told is the thing, whether the tale itself be good or bad. It is never safe for some people to repeat a good story they have heard, for they may tell it in a fashion that is like being bitten to death by a duck.
I do not claim originality for my own method and material. I simply tell a story, using whatever material comes my way. Often a friend will tell me of something he has seen or heard; I will reconstruct his narrative, without tampering with the facts, yet so that the people of whom he told it will not recognize it.
There is nothing, except advice, of which the world is more generous than stories. Everybody tells them. They mean well; they want to make you laugh, and they deserve credit for their intention. Yet when neighbor Smith or Brown calls you aside, looks as if he was almost bursting with something good, and then gets off a yarn that was funny when he heard it, but in which you can’t discern the ghost of a laugh—why, you can’t help wondering whether Smith’s or Brown’s funny-bone hasn’t dropped off somewhere, without its owner’s knowledge; you also can’t help wishing that he may find it before he buttonholes you again.
It seems to me that the supreme art of telling a story is to tell it quickly and hide the nub so that the hearer’s wits must find it. But it is possible for some people to tell it quickly at the expense of the essential parts, either through forgetfulness or by not knowing them at sight. For example, here is a tale I heard not long ago:
“The other night Ezra Kendall told about an Irishman who had a habit of walking in a graveyard about twelve o’clock at night. Some boys of the neighborhood planned to so dig and conceal a grave that the Irishman would fall into it; another man was to drape himself in a sheet, to scare Mike. The night arrived, the Irishman took his customary walk and fell into the hole prepared for him. A boy in a white sheet arose, and said in a sepulchral voice: