For a few minutes the child retained his sitting posture as if nothing extraordinary had happened. Dr. Jonnesco patted him on the back and said a few pleasant words in French, while the nurses and assistants chatted amiably in English.
"How do you feel now?" the attending surgeon asked, after the lapse of three or four minutes.
"All right," replied the boy animatedly, "'cept that my legs feel like they was going to sleep."
The nurses now laid the patient down upon his back, throwing a handkerchief over his eyes, so that he could not himself witness the subsequent proceedings. There was, naturally, much holding of breath as Dr. Virgil P. Gibney, the operating surgeon, raised his knife and quickly made a deep incision in the heel of this perfectly conscious patient. From the child, however, there was not the slightest evidence of sensation.
"Didn't you feel anything, my boy?" asked Dr. Gibney, pausing.
"No, I don't feel nothin'," came the response from under the handkerchief.
An operation lasting nearly half an hour ensued. The deepest tissues were cut, the tendons were stretched, the incision was sewed up, all apparently without the patient's knowledge.
Some types of articles, although expository in purpose, are entirely narrative and descriptive in form. By relating his own experiences in a confession story, for example, a writer may be able to show very clearly and interestingly the dangers of speculations in stocks with but small capital. Personality sketches are almost always narrative and descriptive.
Many of the devices of the short story will be found useful in articles. Not only is truth stranger than fiction, but facts may be so presented as to be even more interesting than fiction. Conversation, character-drawing, suspense, and other methods familiar to the writer of short stories may be used effectively in special articles. Their application to particular types of articles is shown in the following pages.
Special Types of Articles. Although there is no generally recognized classification of special feature articles, several distinct types may be noted, such as (1) the interview, (2) the personal experience story, (3) the confession article, (4) the "how-to-do-something" article, (5) the personality sketch, (6) the narrative in the third person. These classes, it is evident, are not mutually exclusive, but may for convenience be treated separately.