TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

In the plain text version words in Italics are denoted by _underscores_ and bold text like =this=.

The book cover was modified by the Transcriber and has been added to the public domain.

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.

Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.

“Havelok had all he wanted to eat.”

MODERN ESSAYS
AND STORIES

A BOOK TO AWAKEN APPRECIATION OF
MODERN PROSE, AND TO DEVELOP
ABILITY AND ORIGINALITY IN WRITING

EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, SUGGESTIVE
QUESTIONS, SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION, DIRECTIONS
FOR WRITING, AND ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

FREDERICK HOUK LAW, Ph.D.

Head of the Department of English in the Stuyvesant High School,
New York City, Editor of Modern Short Stories, etc.

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE CENTURY CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE
RIGHT TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK, OR
PORTIONS THEREOF, IN ANY FORM. 3120

PREFACE

In all schools pupils are expected to write “essays” but, curiously enough, essay-reading and essay-writing are taught but little. In spite of that neglect, the essay is so altogether natural and spontaneous in spirit, so intensely personal in expression, and so demanding of excellence of prose style, that it is the form, par excellence, for consideration in school if teachers are to show pupils much concerning the art of writing well. The essay is to prose what the lyric is to poetry—complete, genuine and beautiful self-expression, or better still, self-revelation.

Most of the writing done in schools is straightforward narration of events, without much, if any, attempt to show personal reactions on those events—mere diary-like accounts, at best; mechanical descriptions that aim to present exterior appearance without attempting to reveal inner meanings or to show awakened emotions; and stereotyped explanations and arguments drawn, for the most part, from books of reference or from slight observation.

Beyond all this mechanical work lies a field of throbbing personal life, of joyous reactions on all the myriads of interests that lie close at hand, of meditations on the wonders of plant and animal life, of humorous or philosophic comments on human nature, and of all manner of vague dreams and aspirations aroused by

“Such sights as youthful poets dream
On summer eves by haunted stream.”

Without the slightest question, it is the duty of the school, and of the teacher in particular, to lead pupils to appreciate honesty and originality in unapplied, unpragmatic self-expression, and to show pupils how they themselves may gain the very real pleasure of putting down on paper permanent records of their own intimate thinking.

Joseph Addison's The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers and Washington Irving's Sketch Book have for many years made valiant but unsuccessful efforts to fill the places that should be filled by more modern representatives of the essay. Macaulay's Essay on Johnson is a biographical article for an encyclopedia; his essays on Clive and on Hastings are polemics; and Carlyle's Essay on Burns is a critical disquisition. With the exception of The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, all these so-called essays are of considerable length and are unfitted to serve as the best examples of the essay form;—for the essay, like the lyric, demands brevity: it is, after all, only a quick flash of self-revelation,—not a sustained effort.

Then again, who would wish to learn to write like Addison, like Washington Irving, like Macaulay, or like Carlyle! Those great writers couched their thoughts in the language-fashions of their days, just as they clothed their bodies in the garments of their times. To imitate either their style of expression or their costumes would be to make one's self ridiculous, or to take part in a species of masquerade.

The extremely Latinized vocabulary of 1711, or the resonant periods and marked antitheses of 1850, are as old-fashioned to-day as are the once highly respected periwigs, great-coats and silver shoe buckles of the past.

The thoughts of yesterday are not the thoughts of to-day. There is, in serious reality, such a thing as “an old-fashioned point of view.” With all due reverence for the past, the best teachers of to-day believe that it is just as necessary for students to use present-day methods of expression and to cultivate present-day interests as it is to take advantage of the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile, and the thousand other mechanical contrivances that aid life to-day, but which were unknown in 1711 or in 1850.

The type of essay that should be studied in school should concern modern interests; represent the modern point of view; discuss subjects in which young students are interested; be expressed in present-day language and, in general, should set forward an example that pupils may directly and successfully imitate.

In order to do all this to the best advantage the essays chosen for study should be exceedingly short. To a young student essays of any considerable length, unless the subject matter is of unusually intensive interest, present insuperable difficulties. Short essays, on the other hand, appear to him exactly what they are,—charmingly delightful expressions of personal opinion.

The essays in this book, instead of telling about coffee houses or stage coaches, Scotch peasants or literary circles in London or Edinburgh, tell about such subjects as Christmas crowds, church bells, walking, dogs, the wind, children, the streets of New York, school experiences, and various modern ideals in work, in literature, and in life. Most of the essays are exceedingly short, only one or two being more than a few pages in length.

The essays here given represent various types, including not only the chatty, familiar essay but also informational essays, critical essays, biographical essays, story essays, and one or two examples of highly poetic prose.

An informal introduction, paving the way to a sympathetic understanding, precedes every essay. Notes below the pages of text explain immediately all the literary or historical allusions with which a young reader might not be familiar, their close position to the text making it unnecessary for a student to hunt for an explanation.

Suggestive questions given immediately after every essay make it possible for the teacher to assign lessons quickly; they also enable the student to study by himself and to feel assured that he will not miss any important point.

Twenty subjects, suitable as subjects for essays to be written by the student in direct imitation of the essay that immediately precedes them, follow every selection. In addition to this great number of appropriate modern subjects, more than 500 in number, on which young students can express their real selves, there are given, in connection with every list of subjects, directions for writing,—such as a teacher might give a class when assigning written work.

The subject-lists and the directions for writing give the teacher a remarkable opportunity to stimulate a class as never before; to awaken a spirit of genuine self-expression; and to teach English composition in a way that he can not possibly do through the medium of any of our present-day rhetorics.

For the advantage of those teachers who wish to combine the teaching of the essay and of the short story, and who may not have at hand any suitable collection of short stories, the book includes not only introductory material concerning the nature of the short story and the development of the short story form, but also a series of stories of unusual interest for young readers, so chosen and so arranged that they represent the development of the short story through the legendary tale, the historical story, and the romantic story of adventure, to the story of realism and of character. In every case the story chosen is one that any student will enjoy and will understand immediately, as well as one that he can imitate both with pleasure and with success.

Introductions, foot notes, suggestive questions, subjects for written imitation, and directions for writing, follow every story.

If the book is used both as a means of awakening literary appreciation and developing honesty, originality, and power in written self-expression it will give pleasure to teachers and students alike.

INTRODUCTION

I
THE WRITING OF ESSAYS

“The plowman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe....”

Why? Simply because they are happy; because they are healthy and vigorous, and at work; because they are doing something that interests them; because their hearty enjoyment in life must express itself in some other way than in work alone: in fact, they whistle and sing just for the doing of it,—not that they wish any other person to hear them, and not that they wish to teach anything to anyone. Their whistling and singing are spontaneous, and for the sake of expression alone.

Many of the best English essays were written just for the joy of self-expression. Serious workers in life, in their leisure moments, have let their pens move, as it were, automatically, in a sort of frank and full expression somewhat akin to the plowman's whistling and the milkmaid's singing.

Certainly in that joyous spirit Michel de Montaigne, in the sixteenth century, wrote the delightfully familiar essays that have charmed readers for over three hundred years, and that established the essay as a literary type. In a like vein, frankly and personally, Charles Lamb, who died in the first half of the nineteenth century, wrote intimate confessions of his thoughts,—his memories of schooldays and of early companionships and familiar places,—writing with all the warmth and color of affectionate regard. Happily, and because he was glad to be alive, Robert Louis Stevenson, almost in our own days, wrote of his love of the good outdoor world with its brooks and trees and stars, of his love of books and high thought, and his admiration of a manly attitude toward life.

For such people writing for the sake of expression was just as pure joy as the plowman's whistling and the milkmaid's singing.

Ordinary people write at least the beginnings of essays when they write letters,—not business letters in which they order yards of cloth, or complain that goods have not been delivered,—not letters that convey any of the business of life,—but rambling, gossipy, self-revealing letters, so illuminated with personality that they carry the very spirit of the writers.

Everyone, at times, talks or writes in a gossipy way of the things that interest him. He likes to escape from the world of daily tasks, of orders, directions, explanations and arguments, and to talk or write almost without purpose and just for the sake of saying something. In that sense everyone is a natural essayist.

The true essayist, like the pleasant conversationalist, expresses himself because it gives him pleasure. Out of his rich experience and wide observation he speaks wisely and kindly. He has no one story to tell and no one picture to present. He follows no rules and he aims at no very serious purpose. He does not desire to instruct nor to convince. Like the conversationalist, he is ready to leave some things half-said and to emphasize some subjects, not because it is logical to do so but because he happens to like them. He is ready at any moment to tell an anecdote, to introduce humor or pathos, or to describe a scene or a person—if so doing fits his mood. In general, the true essayist is like the musician who improvises: he

“Lets his fingers wander as they list,
And builds a bridge from dreamland.”

Of all possible kinds of prose writing, the essay, therefore, gives the greatest freedom. The essayist may reveal himself completely and in any manner that he pleases. He may tell of his delight in wandering by mountain streams, or in mingling with the crowds in city streets; he may tell of his thoughts as he meditated by ancient buildings or in the solemn half-darkness of age-old churches; he may dream of a long-gone childhood or look ahead into a roseate future; he may talk of people whom he has known, of books that he has read, or of the ideals of life. Any subject is his, and any method of treatment is his,—just so long as his first thought is the frank and full expression of himself.

To write an essay,—even though it be only a paragraph,—is to gain the pleasure of putting at least a little of one's real self down on paper—just because to do so is pleasure.

II
THE NATURE OF THE ESSAY

The essay, then, instead of being a formal composition, is characterized by a lack of formality. It is a species of very friendly and familiar writing. Like good conversation, it turns in any direction, and drops now and then into interesting anecdotes or pleasant descriptions, but never makes any attempt to go to the heart of a subject. However serious an essay may be it never becomes extremely formal or all-inclusive.

A chapter in a textbook includes all that the subject demands and all that the scope of treatment permits. It presents well-organized information in clear, logical form. It aims definitely to explain or to instruct. It may reveal nothing whatever concerning its writer. An essay, on the other hand, includes only those parts of the subject that interest the writer; it avoids logical form, and is just as chatty, wandering, anecdotal and aimless as is familiar talk. It focuses attention, not on subject-matter but on the personality of the writer.

The essay does not reveal a subject: it reveals personal interests in a subject. It touches instead of analyzing. It comments instead of classifying.

Truth may sparkle in an essay as gold sparkles in the sand of an Alaskan river, but the presentation of the truth in a scientific sense is no more the purpose of the essay than is the presentation of the gold the purpose of the river. In the eighteenth century, essayists like Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson, commented freely upon eighteenth century manners and customs, but they made no attempt to present a careful survey of the subject. Every writer wrote of what happened to interest him. To-day it is possible to draw from the great body of eighteenth century essays material for an almost complete survey of manners and customs in that period—but that result is only an accident. The writers did not intend it.

The essayist is not concerned with giving accurate and logically-arranged information. He thinks only of telling how his subject appeals to him, of telling whether or not he likes it, and why. The more personally he writes, the better we like his work. In his revelation of himself we find a sort of revelation of ourselves as well,—and we like his work in proportion to that revelation.

Naturally, a good essay is short; for self-revelation is given in flashes, as it were,—in sparkles of thought that gleam only for a moment. Many so-called essays of great length are either only partly essays, or else are made up of a number of essays put together. Stevenson's An Inland Voyage is partly a straightforward story of a canoe trip, and partly a series of essays on subjects suggested by the trip. It is possible to draw from a self-revealing book of considerable length a great number of essays on a wide variety of subjects. The essays gleam in the pages of ordinary material as diamonds gleam in their settings of gold.

The essay, as a literary type, is written comment upon any subject, highly informal in nature, extremely personal in character, and brief in expression. It is also usually marked by a notable beauty of style.

III
TYPES OF THE ESSAY

Just as there are many kinds of houses and many kinds of boats so there are many kinds of essays. Some essays tend to emphasize the giving of information, lean very strongly toward formality, and place comparatively little weight on personality,—and yet even such essays, as compared with other and more serious writings, are discursive and personal. They are like some people who seem to favor extreme formality without ever quite attaining it.

Other essays are critical. They point out the good and the bad, and they set forward ideals that should be reached. The criticism they give is not measured and accurate like the criticism a cabinet-maker might make concerning the construction of a desk. It is more or less personal and haphazard like the remarks of one who knows what he likes and what he does not like but who does not wish to bother himself by going into minute details.

Many essays tell stories, but never for the sake of the stories alone. They use the stories as frameworks on which to hang thought, or as illustrations to emphasize thought. The essays hold beyond and above everything the personality of the one who writes.

Almost all essays are in some sense biographical, but they reveal stories of lives, instead of telling the stories in organized form. The little of biography that essays tell is just enough to permit the writers to recall the memories of childhood, and the varied affections and interests of life. For real biography one must go elsewhere than to essays.

Some essays lift one into a fine and close communion with their writers, and give intimate companionship with a human soul. They are the best of all essays. Such essays are always extremely familiar, and deeply personal, like the essays of Michel de Montaigne and Charles Lamb. About such essays is an aroma, a fascination, a delight, that makes them a joy forever. As one reads such essays he feels that he is walking and talking with the writers, and that he hears them express noble and uplifting thoughts.

The terse style of Francis Bacon; the magical phrases of Sir Thomas Browne; the well-rounded sentences of Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele and Oliver Goldsmith; the poetic prose of Thomas de Quincey; the charm of the pages of Charles Lamb and Robert Louis Stevenson,—all this is in no sense accidental. The intimate revelation of self, such as is always made by the best essayists, creates the most pleasing style. Genuine self-expression, whether it be the fervor of an impassioned orator, the ardor of a lyric poet, or the meditative mood of the essayist, always tends to embody itself in an appropriate style. For that reason much of the best prose of the language is to be found in the works of the great essayists.

Some writers, like Thomas de Quincey, have so felt the significance of beauty of style, and have so appreciated its relationship to the revelation of mood and personality, that they seem, in some cases, to have written for style alone. Their essays are unsurpassed tissues of prose and poetry.

IV
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ESSAY

Through the medium of spoken or written meditations men have always expressed their personalities, and thereby have approached the writing of essays. Many sections of the Bible are practically essays, especially those passages in Ecclesiastes that speak concerning friendship, wisdom, pride, gossip, vengeance, punishment and topics of similar type. In the ancient Greek and Roman orations are essay-like sections in which the speakers paused for a moment to express their innermost thoughts about life, patriotism, duty, or the great fact of death. Cicero, one of the most remarkable Romans, wrote admirably and with a spirit of familiarity and frankness, on friendship, old age, and immortality. In all ages, in speeches, in letters, and in longer works, essay-like productions appeared.

The invention of the modern essay,—that is, of the extremely informal, intimate and personal meditation,—came in 1571, in France. The inventor of the new type of literature was Michel de Montaigne, a retired scholar, counsellor and courtier, who found a studious refuge in the old tower of Montaigne, where he meditated and wrote for nine years. His essays, which were first published in 1580, are so delightfully informal, so frankly personal, so clever and well-aimed in humor, and so wise, that they are almost without parallel. In 1601 an Italian, Giovanni Florio, translated Montaigne's essays into English. Immediately the essays became popular and they have deeply influenced the writing of essays in English. In 1597 Francis Bacon published the first of his essays, but he did not write with the familiarity that characterized Montaigne. Nevertheless, his work, together with that of Montaigne, is to be regarded as representing the beginning of the modern essay.

It was not until the development of the newspaper in the eighteenth century that the essay found its real period of growth as a literary type. In the first half of the eighteenth century The Tatler and The Spectator, and similar periodicals, gave an opportunity for the publication of short prose compositions of a popular nature. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, writing with kindly humor on the foibles of the day, did much to establish the popularity of the essay. Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith and other writers, in other periodicals, continued the writing of essays, and made the power of the essay known.

Until the time of Charles Lamb, in the first half of the nineteenth century, no English writer had even approached the familiar charm of Montaigne. Bacon had written in a formal manner; his followers had held before them the thought of teaching rather than the thought of self-revelation; the eighteenth century writers had delighted in character studies and in observations on social life and customs. Lamb, on the other hand, wrote not to instruct but to communicate; not about the world but about himself. He restored the essay to its position as a means of self-revelation. The most notable fact about Lamb's essays is that they reveal him to us as one of the persons whom we know best. At the same time humor, pathos and beauty of expression are so remarkable in Lamb's essays that they alone give them permanent value.

Other writers of the essay, like Leigh Hunt, Sydney Smith, William Hazlitt, and Francis Jeffrey, wrote powerfully but none of them with a charm equal to that of Lamb. Thomas de Quincey, writing in a highly poetic style, did much to stimulate poetic prose. Lord Macaulay, in a number of critical and biographical essays, wrote forcefully, logically, and with a high degree of mastery of style but he paid slight attention to self-revelation.

It is evident, then, that there are two marked types of the essay,—one, the formal, purposive composition; and the other informal and intensely personal in nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, and James Russell Lowell represent the first type. Many excellent articles in periodicals, and many of the best of editorial articles in newspapers are in reality essays of the formal kind. Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry D. Thoreau, George William Curtis and many others represent the second type.

In modern times the world has been blessed by the writing of a number of essays of the charming, familiar type. John Burroughs has revealed his love for the world of nature; Henry Van Dyke has taken us among the mountains and along the rivers; and Gilbert K. Chesterton, Arnold Bennett, Samuel M. Crothers, Charles Dudley Warner, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Brander Matthews, Agnes Repplier and a host of others have written on many and varied subjects.

Great essayists, like great novelists or great poets or great dramatists, are rare. It is only now and then that a Montaigne, a Charles Lamb, or a Robert Louis Stevenson appears. It is to the glory of literature, however, that there are so many who write in the field of the essay, and who approach true greatness, even if they do not attain it.

V
ESSAYS WELL WORTH READING

VI
THE WRITING OF SHORT STORIES

You cross a street and narrowly escape being run over by an automobile; or you go on a picnic and have delightful experiences; or you return from travel, with the memory of happy adventures—at once an uncontrollable impulse besets you to tell some one what you experienced. That desire to interest some one else in the series of actions that interested you, is the basis of all story-telling.

In one of its simplest forms story-telling is personal and concerns events that actually occurred to the story-teller. Such narration uses the words “I,” “me” and “mine,” seeks no development, aims at no climax, and strikes at interest only through telling of the unusual.

When you stand before an abandoned farm-house and see its half-fallen chimney, its decayed boards, its gaping windows, and the wild vines that clamber into what was once a home your imagination takes fire, and you think of happier days that the house has seen. You imagine the man and woman who built it; the children who played in its doorways; and the happy gatherings or sad scenes that marked its story. That quick imagination of the might-be and the might-have-been is the beginning both of realism and of romance. The story you would tell would use the third person, in all probability; would seek an orderly development, and would aim at climax.

When you stand in your window on a winter day and watch thousands of snow-flakes float down from the sky, circling in fantastic whirls, you see them as so many white fairies led by a master spirit in revel and dance. You are ready to tell, with whatever degree of fancy and skill you can command, the story of the-world-as-it-is-not and as-it-never-will-be. A story of that kind is pure romance.

Whenever you tell what happened to you or to some one else; or what might have been or might be; or of what could not possibly be, your object is to interest some one else in what interests you. You use many expedients to capture and to hold interest: you make a quick beginning, or careful preparation for the climax; you make your story as real or as striking as you can make it; you cut it short or you tell it at length; or you hold the reader's attention on some point of interest that you do not reveal in full until the last. Whatever you do to capture and to hold interest makes for art in story-telling.

When an airplane descends unexpectedly in a country town every one in the place wishes, as soon as possible, to learn whence the aviator came and what experiences he had. Human curiosity is insatiable, and for that reason people love to hear stories as well as to tell them.

In fact, people gain distinct advantages by reading stories. They become acquainted with many types of character; they see all sorts of interesting events that they could never see in reality; they see what happens under certain circumstances, and thereby they gain practical lessons. Through their reading they gain such vivid experiences that they are likely to have a larger outlook upon life.

VII
NATURE OF THE SHORT STORY

Brevity is the first essential of a short story, and yet under the term, “brief,” may be included a story that is told in one or two paragraphs, and a story that is told in many pages. A story that is so long that it cannot be read easily at a single sitting is not a short story.

To make one strong impression on the mind of the reader, and to make that impression so powerfully that it will leave the reader pleased, convinced and emotionally moved is the principal aim of a good short story. To the production of that one effect everything in the story,—characters, action, description, and exposition,—points with the definiteness of an established purpose. All else is omitted, and thus all the parts of the story are both necessary and harmonious.

Centralizing everything on the production of one effect makes every short story complete in itself. The purpose having been accomplished there is nothing more to be said. The end is the end.

A convincing sense of reality characterizes every excellent short story. The author himself appears only as one who narrates truth, not at all as one who has moved the puppets of imagination. The story seems a transcript from real experience. The characters,—not the author,—make the plot. Their personalities reveal themselves in action. The entire story is founded substantially upon life and appears as a photographic glimpse of reality.

As in all other writing, the greater the art of the writer in adapting style to thought, in using language effectively, the better production. Word-choice, power of phrasing, and skill in artistic construction count for as much in the short story as in any other type of literature.

VIII
TYPES OF THE SHORT STORY

Since the short story represents life, it has as many types as there are interests in life. It may confine itself to the ordinary events of life in city or country, at home or abroad; it may concern past events in various regions; or it may look with a prophetic glance into the distant future. It may concern nothing but verifiable truth or be highly imaginative, delicately fanciful, or notably grotesque. It may draw interest from quaint places and odd characters, or it may appeal through vividness of action. It may aim to do nothing more than to arouse interest and to give pleasure for a moment, or it may endeavor to teach a truth.

Among the many types of the short story, a few are especially worthy of note.

Folk-lore stories are stories that have been told by common people for ages. They come direct from the experience and the common sense of ordinary people. They represent the interests, the faith and the ideals of the race from which they come.

Fables are very short stories that point out virtues and defects in human character presented in the guise of animal life.

Legends are stories that have come down to us from a time beyond our own. They are less simple and direct than the ordinary folk-lore story. Undoubtedly founded on actual occurrences they have tinged fact with a poetic beauty that ennobles them and often gives them highly ethical values.

Stories of adventure emphasize startling events rather than character.

Love stories emphasize courtship and the episodes of romantic love.

Local color stories reveal marked characteristics of custom and language, and the oddities of life notable in a particular locality.

Dialect stories make use of the language peculiarities found in common use by a particular type of people.

Stories of the supernatural deal with ghostly characters and uncanny forces.

Stories of mystery present puzzling problems, and slowly, step by step, lead the readers to satisfactory solutions.

Animal stories, whether realistic or romantic, concern the lives of animals.

Stories of allegory, through symbolic characters and events, reveal moral truths.

Stories of satire, by ridiculing types of character, social customs, or methods of action, tend to awaken a spirit of reform.

Stories of science present narratives based upon the exposition and the actual use of scientific facts.

Stories of character emphasize notable personalities, place stress upon motive and the inner nature rather than upon outer action, and clarify the reader's understanding of human character.

IX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHORT STORY

Although the beginnings of the short story existed in the past, and although tales were told in all ages, the short story, in its present form, is a comparatively new type of literature. The short, complete, realistic narrative designed to produce a single strong impression, came into being in the first half of the nineteenth century. The first writer to point out and to exemplify the principles of the modern short story was Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849.

As early as 4000 B.C. the Egyptians composed the Tales of the Magicians, and in the pre-Christian eras the Greeks and other peoples wrote short prose narratives. Folk-lore tales go back to very early times. The celebrated Gesta Romanorum is a collection of anecdotes and tales drawn from many ages and peoples, including the Greeks, the Egyptians and the peoples of Asia. In the early periods of the history of Europe and of England many narratives centered around the supposed exploits of romantic characters like the ancient Greeks and Trojans, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne and King Arthur.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Italians became skilful in the telling of tales called novelle. Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375, brought together from wide and varied sources a collection of one hundred such tales in a volume called Il Decamerone. He united the tales by imagining that seven ladies and three gentlemen who had fled from Florence to avoid the plague, pass their time in story-telling. His work had the deepest influence on many later writers, including particularly the English poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, 1340-1400, whose Canterbury Tales re-tell some of Boccaccio's stories. Chaucer imagines that a number of people, representing all the types of English life, tell stories as they journey slowly to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. His stories intimately reveal the actual England of his day. He is the first great realist.

In the sixteenth century many writers, particularly in Italy, France and Spain, told ingenious stories that developed new interest in story-telling and story-reading.

The writing of character studies and the development of periodicals led, in the eighteenth century, to such essays as The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, written for The Spectator by Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, and Sir Richard Steele, 1672-1729. The doings of Sir Roger de Coverley are told so realistically and so entertainingly that it was evident that such material could be used not only to illustrate the thought of an essayist but also for its own sake in stories founded on character.

About the beginning of the nineteenth century stories of an uncanny nature,—of ghosts and strange events,—the so-called “Gothic” stories,—became widely popular. Two German writers, E. T. A. Hoffmann, 1776-1822, and Ludwig Tieck, 1773-1853, wrote with such peculiar power that they led other writers to imitate them. Among the followers of Tieck and Hoffmann the most notable name is that of Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe's contemporaries, Washington Irving, 1783-1859, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864, likewise showed the influence of the “Gothic” school of writing. Irving turned the ghostly into humor, as in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Hawthorne wrote of the mysterious in terms of fancy and allegory, as in Ethan Brand, The Birth Mark, and Rappaccini's Daughter; Poe directed all his energy to the production of single effect,—frequently the effect of horror, as in The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat and The Pit and the Pendulum. Poe's natural ability as a constructive artist, and his genuine interest in story-telling, led him to formulate the five principles of the short story:—brevity, single effect, verisimilitude, the omission of the non-essential, and finality.

From the time when Poe pointed the way the short story has had an unparalleled development. French writers like Guy de Maupassant; British writers like Rudyard Kipling; Russian writers like Count Leo Tolstoi, and American writers like O. Henry, Richard Harding Davis, Frank R. Stockton, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, F. Hopkinson Smith, Jack London, and a thousand others, have carried on the great tradition.

X
AUTHORS OF SHORT STORIES WELL WORTH READING

Volumes containing short stories by the following writers will be found in any public library. Any one who wishes to gain an understanding of the principles of the short story should read a number of stories by every writer named in the list.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MODERN ESSAYS AND STORIES

THE FAMILIAR ESSAY

THE PUP-DOG

By ROBERT PALFREY UTTER

(1875—). Associate Professor of English in the University of California. He taught for a time at Harvard and also at Amherst. He is a delightful essayist, and contributes frequently to various magazines.

The writer of a familiar essay selects any subject in which he is interested. Sometimes the more trifling the subject seems to be, the more delightful is the essay. Trifles, in fact, make up life, and around them center many of our deepest interests. The very charm of the familiar essay lies in its ability to call attention to the value of trifles,—to the little things in life, to little events, and to all the odds and ends of human interests.

The familiar essay is nothing more than happy talk that gives us, as it were, a walk or a chat with one who has a keen mind, a ready wit, and a pleasant spirit.

The Pup-Dog is an unusually excellent illustration of the familiar essay. We all love him,—the pup-dog,—the good friend about whom Mr. Utter has written so amusingly, so understandingly, and so sympathetically. As we read we can see the dog jumping and hear him barking; we laugh at his antics; we are, in fact, taking a walk with Mr. Utter while he talks to us about his dog,—or our dog.

Any dog is a pup-dog so long as he prefers a rat, dead or alive, to chocolate fudge, a moldy bone to sponge cake, a fight with a woodchuck to hanging round the tea-table for sweet biscuit. Of course he will show traits of age as years advance, but usually they are physical traits, not emotional. For the most part dogs’ affections burn warmly, and their love of life and experience brightly, while life lasts. They remain young, as poets do. Every dog is a pup-dog, but some are more so than others.

Most so of all is the Irish terrier. To me he stands as the archetype of the dog, and the doggier a dog is, the better I like him. I love the collie; none better. I have lived with him, and ranged the hills with him in every kind of weather, and you can hardly tell me a story of his loyalty and intelligence that I cannot go you one better. But the collie is a gentleman. He has risen from the ranks, to be sure, but he is every inch the gentleman, and just now I am speaking of dogs. The terrier is every inch a dog, and the Irish is the terrier par excellence.

The man who mistakes him for an Airedale, as many do, is one who does not know an Irishman from a Scot. The Airedale has a touch of the national dourness; I believe that he is a Calvinist at heart, with a severe sense of personal responsibility. The Irish terrier can atone vicariously or not at all for his light-hearted sins. The Airedale takes his romance and his fighting as seriously as an Alan Breck. The Irish terrier has all the imagination and humor of his race; he has a rollicking air; he is whimsical, warm-hearted, jaunty, and has the gift of blarney. He loves a scrimmage better than his dinner, but he bears no malice.

His fellest earthly foes,
Cats, he does but affect to hate.

The terrier family is primarily a jolly, good-natured crowd whose business it is to dig into the lairs of burrowing creatures and fight them at narrow quarters. The signal for the fight is the attack on the intrusive nose. You can read this family history in the pup-dog's treatment of the cat. The cat of his own household with whom he is brought up he rallies with good-humored banter, but he is less likely to hurt her than she him. He will take her with him on his morning round of neighborhood garbage-pails, and even warm her kittens on his back as he lies in the square of sunshine on the kitchen floor, till they begin to knead their tiny claws into him in a futile search for nourishment; then he shakes them patiently off and seeks rest elsewhere. He will chase any cat as long as she will run; if she refuses to run, he will dance round her and bark, trying to get up a game. “Be a sport!” he taunts her. “Take a chance!” But if she claws his nose, she treads on the tail of his coat, and no Irish gentleman will stand for that.

Similar are his tactics with human creatures. First he tries a small bluff to see if he can start anything. If his victim shows signs of fear, he redoubles his effort, his tail the while signaling huge delight at his success. If the victim shows fight, he may develop the attack in earnest. The victim who shows either fear or fight betrays complete ignorance of dog nature, for the initial bluff is always naïvely transparent; the pup-dog may have a poker face, but his tail is a rank traitor. A nest of yellow-jackets in a hole in the ground challenges his every instinct. He cocks his ear at the subterranean buzzing, tries a little tentative excavation with cautious paw. Soon one of the inmates scores on the tip of his nose, and war is declared in earnest. There are leaping attacks with clashing of teeth, and wildly gyrating rear-guard actions. Custom cannot stale the charm of the spot; all summer, so long as there is a wing stirring, hornets shall be hot i' the mouth.

The degree of youth which the pup-dog attains and holds is that of the human male of eleven or twelve years. He nurses an inextinguishable quarrel with the hair-brush. His hatred of the formal bath is chronic, but he will paddle delightedly in any casual water out of doors, regardless of temperatures and seasons. At home he will sometimes scoff at plain, wholesome food, but to the public he gives the impression that his family systematically starve him, and his dietetic experiments often have weird and disastrous results. You can never count on his behavior except on formal occasions, when you know to a certainty that he will disgrace you. His curiosity is equaled only by his adroitness in getting out of awkward situations into which it plunges him. His love of play is unquenchable by weariness or hunger; there is no time when the sight of a ball will not rouse him to clamorous activity.

For fine clothes he has a satiric contempt, and will almost invariably manage to land a dirty footprint on white waist-coat or “ice-cream pants” in the first five minutes of their immaculacy. He is one hundred per cent. motor-minded; when he is “stung with the splendor of a sudden thought,” he springs to immediate action. In the absence of any ideas he relaxes and sleeps with the abandon of a jute door-mat.

Dog meets dog as boy meets boy, with assertions of superiority, challenge, perhaps fight, followed by friendship and play. No wonder that with pup-boys the pup-dog is so completely at one; his code is their code, and whither they go he goes—except to school. With September come the dull days for him. No more the hordes of pirates and bandits with bandanas and peaked hats, belts stuck full of dirks and “ottermaticks,” sweep up and down the sidewalk on bicycles in open defiance of the law, raiding lawns and gardens, scattering shrieking tea-parties of little girls and dolls, haling them aboard the lugger in the next lot and holding them for fabulous ransom. There is always some one who will pay it with an imposing check signed “Theodore Wilson Roosevelt Woodrow Rockefeller.” He prances with flopping ears beside the flying wheels, crouches in ambush, gives tongue in the raid, flies at the victims and tears their frocks, mounts guard in the cave, and shares the bandits' last cookie.

But when the pirates become orderly citizens, his day begins after school and ends with supper. With his paws on the window-sill, his nose making misty spots on the glass, he watches them as they march away in the morning, then he makes a perfunctory round of the neighborhood, inspecting garbage-pails and unwary cats. After that there is nothing to do but relax in the September sunshine and exist in a coma till the pirates return and resume their normal functions, except for his routine attempt to intimidate the postman and the iceman. Perhaps he might succeed some happy day; who knows?

The pup-dog in the open is the best of companions; his exuberant vitality and unquenchable zest for things in general give him endless variety. There are times, perhaps, when you see little of him; he uses you as a mobile base of operations, and runs an epicycloidal course with you as moving center, showing only a flash of his tail on one horizon or the flop of his ears on the other. You hear his wild cries of excitement when he starts a squirrel or a rabbit. By rare luck you may be called in time to referee a fight with a woodchuck, or once in a happy dog's age you may see him, a khaki streak through the underbrush, in pursuit of a fox.

At last you hear the drumming of his feet on the road behind you; he shoots past before he can shift gears, wheels, and lands a running jump on your diaphragm by way of reporting present for duty. Thereafter he sticks a little closer, popping out into the road or showing his tousled face through the leaves at intervals of two or three hundred yards to make sure that you are still on the planet. Then you may enjoy his indefatigable industry in counting with his nose, his tail quivering with delight, the chinks of old stone walls. You may light your pipe and sit by for an hour as he energetically follows his family tradition in digging under an old stump, shooting the sand out behind with kangaroo strokes, tugging at the roots with his teeth, and pausing from time to time to grin at you with a yard of pink tongue completely surrounded by leaf mold. You may admire his zeal as inspector of chipmunks, mice, frogs, grasshoppers, crickets, and such small deer. Anything that lives and tries to get away from him is fair game except chickens. If round the turn of the road he plumps into a hen convention, memories of bitter humiliations surge up within him, and he blushes, and turns his face aside. Other dogs he meets with tentative growling, bristling, and tail-wagging, by way of asserting that he will take them on any terms they like; fight or frolic, it is all one to him.

You cannot win his allegiance by feeding him, though he always has his bit of blarney ready for the cook. He loves all members of the family with nice discrimination for their weaknesses: the pup-boy who cannot resist an invitation to romp; the pup-girl who cannot withstand begging blandishments of nose and paw, but will subvert discipline and share food with him whenever and wherever she has it. He will welcome with leapings and gyrations any one of them after a day's absence or an hour's, but his whole-souled allegiance is to the head of the house; his is the one voice that speaks with authority; his the first welcome always when the family returns in a group. That loyalty, burning bright and true to the last spark of life, that unfailing welcome on which a man can count more surely than on any human love—indeed, there is no secret in a man's love for a dog, however we may wonder at the dog's love for the man. Let Argos and Ulysses[1] stand as the type of it, though to me it lacks something of the ideal, not in the image of the dog, but in the conduct of the man. Were I disguised for peril of my life, and my dog, after the wanderings and dangers of many years, lifted his head and knew me and then died, I think no craft could withhold my feelings from betraying me.

“Dogs know their friends,” we say, as if there were mystery in the knowledge. The password of the fraternity is not hidden; you may hear it anywhere. It was spoken at my own hearth when the pup-dog, wet with autumn rain, thrust himself between my guest and the andirons and began to steam. My guest checked my remonstrance. “Don't disturb him on my account, you know. I rather like the smell of a wet dog,” he added apologetically. The word revealed a background that made the speaker at once and forever my guest-friend. In it I saw boy and dog in rain and snow on wet trails, their camp in narrow shelter, where they snuggle together with all in common that they have of food and warmth. He who shared his boyhood with a pup-dog will always share whatever is his with members of the fraternity. He will value the wagging of a stubby tail above all dog-show points and parlor tricks. He will not be rash to chide affectionate importunity, nor to set for his dog higher standards than he upholds for himself. Do you never nurse a grouch and express it in appropriate language? Do you never take direct action when your feelings get away with you? When the like befalls the pup-dog, have ready for him such sympathy as he has always ready for you in your moods. Treat him as an equal, and you will get from him human and imperfect results.

You will never know exactly what your pup-dog gets from you; he tries wistfully to tell you, but leaves you still wondering. But you may have from him a share of his perennial puphood, and you do well to accept it gratefully whenever he offers it. Take it when it comes, though the moment seem inopportune. You may be roused just as you settle for a nap by a moist nose thrust into your hand, two rough brown paws on the edge of your bunk, a pair of bright eyes peering through a jute fringe. Up he comes, steps over you, and settles down between you and the wall with a sigh. Then, if you shut your eyes, you will find that you are not far from that place up on the hill—the big rock and the two oaks—where the pup-boy that used to be you used to snuggle down with that first old pup-dog you ever had.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. What is the effect of the title?
2. How does Mr. Utter make us love the dog?
3. What knowledge of dog life does the writer show?
4. Point out words or expressions that are usually applied only to human beings, that are here applied to dogs.
5. Point out adjective effects.
6. How does the writer make the dog seem amusing?
7. How does the writer make the dog seem admirable?
8. What human characteristics are attributed to the dog?
9. Point out noteworthy examples of humor.
10. Show how the writer employs detail as a means of emphasis.
11. Point out examples of especially effective metaphor.
12. What is said concerning the pup-boy and the pup-girl?
13. How does the essay make us feel toward dogs?
14. What is the effect of the closing sentences?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Select for your subject some animal with which you are intimately familiar, and in which you are especially and sympathetically interested. Write about that animal in such a way that you will bring to the surface its most humorous qualities and its most admirable qualities. Give a great number of details concerning the animal's habits, but give those details in a gossipy manner. Use quotations, if you can, or make allusions to books. Make all your work emphasize goodness. Make your closing paragraph your most effective paragraph,—one that will appeal to sentiment.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] According to Homer's Odyssey when Ulysses returned after many years of wandering, his old dog “Argos” recognized him, even in disguise.

CHEWING GUM[2]

By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER

(1829-1900). A celebrated American essayist and editor. For many years he wrote brilliant papers for Harper's Magazine in the departments called “The Editor's Drawer” and “The Editor's Study.” He became the first President of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He was a great influence for good. Among his books are My Summer in a Garden; Back-Log Studies; In the Wilderness; The Relation of Literature to Life; As We Were Saying; Their Pilgrimage. He edited the valuable “American Men of Letters Series,” and the remarkable work called Library of the World's Best Literature, a collection of extracts from the world's literature, with which every student should be acquainted.

The familiar essay takes for its subject anything that awakens the interest of the essayist. Charles Dudley Warner wrote with freedom and humor on a great number of subjects that in themselves suggest light and humorous treatment rather than serious thinking. Among his many informal essays is the one that follows, entitled Chewing Gum.

What Mr. Warner says in the essay is by no means serious. It is like the spoken reflections of an amused observer who has had his attention attracted to the common American habit of chewing gum in public. At the same time, under the kindly and facetious remarks, is an undercurrent of satire—and satire means criticism.

In language that is unfortunately understood by the greater portion of the people who speak English, thousands are saying on the first of January, a far-off date that it is wonderful any one has lived to see—“Let us have a new deal!” It is a natural exclamation, and does not necessarily mean any change of purpose. It always seems to a man that if he could shuffle the cards he could increase his advantages in the game of life, and, to continue the figure which needs so little explanation, it usually appears to him that he could play anybody else's hand better than his own. In all the good resolutions of the new year, then, it happens that perhaps the most sincere is the determination to get a better hand. Many mistake this for repentance and an intention to reform, when generally it is only the desire for a new shuffle of the cards. Let us have a fresh pack and a new deal, and start fair. It seems idle, therefore, for the moralist to indulge in a homily about annual good intentions, and habits that ought to be dropped or acquired, on the first of January. He can do little more than comment on the passing show.

It will be admitted that if the world at this date is not socially reformed it is not the fault of the Drawer,[3] and for the reason that it has been not so much a critic as an explainer and encourager. It is in the latter character that it undertakes to defend and justify a national industry that has become very important within the past ten years. A great deal of capital is invested in it, and millions of people are actively employed in it. The varieties of chewing gum that are manufactured would be a matter of surprise to those who have paid no attention to the subject, and who may suppose that the millions of mouths they see engaged in its mastication have a common and vulgar taste. From the fact that it can be obtained at the apothecary's, an impression has got abroad that it is medicinal. This is not true. The medical profession do not use it, and what distinguishes it from drugs—that they also do not use—is the fact that they do not prescribe it. It is neither a narcotic nor a stimulant. It cannot strictly be said to soothe or to excite. The habit of using it differs totally from that of the chewing of tobacco or the dipping of snuff. It might, by a purely mechanical operation, keep a person awake, but no one could go to sleep chewing gum. It is in itself neither tonic nor sedative. It is to be noticed also that the gum habit differs from the tobacco habit in that the aromatic and elastic substance is masticated, while the tobacco never is, and that the mastication leads to nothing except more mastication. The task is one that can never be finished. The amount of energy expended in this process if capitalized or conserved would produce great results. Of course the individual does little, but if the power evolved by the practice in a district school could be utilized, it would suffice to run the kindergarten department. The writer has seen a railway car—say in the West—filled with young women, nearly every one of whose jaws and pretty mouths was engaged in this pleasing occupation; and so much power was generated that it would, if applied, have kept the car in motion if the steam had been shut off—at least it would have furnished the motive for illuminating the car by electricity.

This national industry is the subject of constant detraction, satire, and ridicule by the newspaper press. This is because it is not understood, and it may be because it is mainly a female accomplishment: the few men who chew gum may be supposed to do so by reason of gallantry. There might be no more sympathy with it in the press if the real reason for the practice were understood, but it would be treated more respectfully. Some have said that the practice arises from nervousness—the idle desire to be busy without doing anything—and because it fills up the pauses of vacuity in conversation. But this would not fully account for the practice of it in solitude. Some have regarded it as in obedience to the feminine instinct for the cultivation of patience and self-denial—patience in a fruitless activity, and self-denial in the eternal act of mastication without swallowing. It is no more related to these virtues than it is to the habit of the reflective cow in chewing her cud. The cow would never chew gum. The explanation is a more philosophical one, and relates to a great modern social movement. It is to strengthen and develop and make more masculine the lower jaw. The critic who says that this is needless, that the inclination in women to talk would adequately develop this, misses the point altogether. Even if it could be proved that women are greater chatterers than men, the critic would gain nothing. Women have talked freely since creation, but it remains true that a heavy, strong lower jaw is a distinctively masculine characteristic. It is remarked that if a woman has a strong lower jaw she is like a man. Conversation does not create this difference, nor remove it; for the development of the lower jaw in women constant mechanical exercise of the muscles is needed. Now, a spirit of emancipation, of emulation, is abroad, as it ought to be, for the regeneration of the world. It is sometimes called the coming to the front of woman in every act and occupation that used to belong almost exclusively to man. It is not necessary to say a word to justify this. But it is often accompanied by a misconception, namely, that it is necessary for woman to be like man, not only in habits, but in certain physical characteristics. No woman desires a beard, because a beard means care and trouble, and would detract from feminine beauty, but to have a strong and, in appearance, a resolute underjaw may be considered a desirable note of masculinity, and of masculine power and privilege, in the good time coming. Hence the cultivation of it by the chewing of gum is a recognizable and reasonable instinct, and the practice can be defended as neither a whim nor a vain waste of energy and nervous force. In a generation or two it may be laid aside as no longer necessary, or men may be compelled to resort to it to preserve their supremacy.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Why does the writer make use of some very colloquial expressions?
2. Why did he use a number of long and somewhat formal words?
3. In what sense is the essay a New Year's essay?
4. Show how the author produces humor.
5. Show how the author avoids harshness of criticism.
6. What makes the essay forceful?
7. In what respects is the essay fantastic?
8. What advantage does the writer gain by appearing to support the habit of chewing gum?
9. Point out examples of kindly satire.
10. What is the author's purpose?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

You are to write of some habit that is common and that is more or less annoying to well-bred people. Make your words, in mock seriousness, appear to defend the habit that you ridicule. Make your style of writing somewhat ponderous, as though you were writing with the utmost gravity, but be sure to write in such a way that your essay will convey your sense of the ridiculous. Let your whole essay so ridicule the annoying habit that you will tend to destroy it.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] From As We Were Saying, by Charles Dudley Warner. Copyright by Harper and Brothers.

[3] Drawer. The Editor's Drawer of Harper's Magazine for which Mr. Warner wrote many of his best essays.

THE MYSTERY OF AH SING

By ROBERT L. DUFFUS

An editorial writer for the New York Globe, to which, on October 5, 1921, he contributed the following humorous editorial article.

As we go about in daily life various people attract our attention; their peculiarities amuse us, and we make semi-humorous but kindly remarks concerning them. Such remarks are the germs of essays like the following.

In the essay, The Mystery of Ah Sing, there is humor but not a single unkind word. The essay makes us smile, but with sympathy and understanding. Such essays, trivial as they may be, are restful and pleasing.

Ah Sing comes on Tuesdays to get the washing and on Saturdays to bring it back. He is an urbane, smiling person, who appears to view life impersonally and dispassionately. One would say that he realized that the career of Ah Sing was not of prime importance in a population so numerous and a universe so extensive. He loves to ask questions. How old is the mistress of the house? Where did she come from? How much does the master of the house earn? What does he do? Why haven't they any children? Where did they get all the books and pictures?

Ah Sing always wants to know about the vacations, both before and after taking, and looks intelligent when places like Nantucket and the Thousand Islands are mentioned. He follows the family fortunes like an old retainer, and seems to possess a kind of feudal loyalty. It would be morally impossible, not to say physically, to give the washing to any one but Ah Sing. He would come for it, and the mistress of the house would sink through the floor with contrition and embarrassment. He may die out of his job, or go back to China out of it, there to live like a mandarin, but he will not be fired out of it. Never will he join the army of unemployed; never will he stand humbly asking work. He is a monopoly, an institution, a friend.

So far one gets with Ah Sing. To lose him would be like losing a beloved pipe or a comfortable pair of slippers. He belongs amid the furniture of living, and is as simple, homely, and admirable as grandpa's picture on the wall. But what is Ah Sing thinking about? What is going on across that gulf which separates him from us? How many transmigrations must we all go through before we could know Ah Sing as well as we know the family from Indiana which moved in next door last week? How shall we penetrate to the soul of Ah Sing?

If we could answer these questions we could present ourselves forthwith at Washington with the solution of the world's most vexatious problem. But the answers are dark, Ah Sing is remote, and the East and the West have not yet met.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. In what respects is Ah Sing a mystery?
2. Why did the author write about Ah Sing?
3. What are Ah Sing's amusing characteristics?
4. What are Ah Sing's best characteristics?
5. Show that the author's language is original.
6. Show that the essay increases in effect toward the end.
7. How does the author avoid unkindness or satire?
8. How does the essay affect the reader?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Write, with all kindness, about some one who amuses you. Do not include in your essay anything that will be in the nature of fault-finding or complaint. Point out, in a humorous way, the admirable and praiseworthy characteristics of the person about whom you write. Instead of writing a list of characteristics use original expressions that will indicate the real spirit of the character.

OLD DOC

By OPIE READ

(1852—). An American journalist, noted for his work as Editor of The Arkansas Traveller. Among his books, most of which concern life in Arkansas, are: Len Gansett; My Young Master; An Arkansas Planter; Up Terrapin River; A Kentucky Colonel; On the Suwanee River; Miss Polly Lop; The Captain's Romance; The Jucklins.

The character sketch is interesting for the same reason that gossip is interesting: we notice our neighbors and are curious to learn more about them. We are all sharp observers of our fellows. We see their oddities, their cranks, and their amusing habits just as clearly as we see their virtues. We laugh and we admire—in much the same spirit that a mother laughs at her baby, however much she loves it.

Character sketches have been popular for many centuries. Chaucer's Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is really a series of shrewdly-true character sketches keenly tipped with humor, and full of genuine respect for goodness. Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613) wrote a number of strongly pointed sketches of character. A hundred years later Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele conceived the whimsical, good-hearted Sir Roger de Coverley and his company of associates.

Out of such work grew not only the character sketch of to-day but also material for the short story and the novel.

Mr. Read's presentation of the country doctor of the Old South is a striking example of the character sketch. Following the example set by Addison in 1711 Mr. Read first describes the character and then tells an anecdote that reveals personality. The entire sketch is redolent with good-humor.

His house was old, with cedar-trees about it, a big yard, and in the corner a small office. In this professional hut there was only one window, the glass of which was dim with dust blown from the road. In the gentle breeze the lilacs and the roses swopped their perfume, while the guinea-hen arose from her cool nest, dug beneath the dahlias, to chase a katydid along the fence, and then with raucous cry to shatter the silence. The furnishings of the office were less than modest. In one corner a swayed bed threatened to fall, in another a wash-stand stood epileptic on three legs. Nailed against the wall was a protruding cabinet, giving off sick-room memories. The village druggist, compounder of the essences of strange and peculiar “yarbs,” might have bitter and pungent medicines, but Old Doc, himself an extractor of wild juices, had discovered the secret of the swamp. To go into his office and to come forth with no sign was a confession of the loss of smell. Sheep-shearing fills the nostrils with woolly dullness, but sheep-shearers could scent Old Doc as he drove along the road.

In every country the rural doctor is a natural sprout from the soil. His profession is almost as old as the daybreak of time. He bled the ancient Egyptian, blistered the knight of the Middle Ages, and poisoned the arrow of the Iroquois. He has been preserved in fiction, pickled in the drama, spiced in romance, and peppered in satire; but nowhere was he so pronounced a character as in America, in the South. He knew politics, but was not a politician. He looked upon man as a machinist viewing an engine, but was not an atheist. He cautioned health and flattered sickness. He listened with more patience to an old woman harping on her trouble than to a man in his prime relating his experience. His books were few, and the only medical journal found in his office was a sample copy. When his gathered lore failed him, he was wise in silence. To confess to any sort of ignorance would have crippled his trade. It was an art to keep loose things from rattling in his head when he shook it, and of this art he was a perfect master. In raiment he was not over-adorned, but near him you felt that you were in the presence of clothes. Philosophy's trousers might bag at the knees, theology's black vestment might be shy a button, art might wear a burr entangled in its tresses, and even the majesty of the law might go forth in slippers gnawed by a playful puppy; but old doc's “duds,” strong as they were in nostril penetration, must hug the image of neatness. He was usually four years behind the city's fashion, but this was shrewdly studied, for to dress too much after the manner of the flowing present would have branded him a foppish follower. The men might carp at his clean shirt every day, but it won favor with the women; and while robust medicine may steal secret delight from seeing two maul-fisted men punch each other in a ring, it must openly profess a preference for the scandals that shock society.

At no place along the numerous roads traversed by old doc was there a sign-post with a finger pointing toward the attainment of an ultimate ambition. No senate house, no woolsack of greatness, waited for him. The chill of foul weather was his most natural atmosphere; and should the dark night turn from rain to sleet, it was then that he heard a knock and a “Hello!” at his door. Down through the miry bottom-land and up the flint hillside flashed the light of his gig-lamp, striking responsive shine from the eye of the fascinated wolf. The farther he had to travel, the less likely was he to collect his bill. Usury might sell the widow's cow, for no one expected business to have a daintiness of touch; but if Doc sued for his fee, he was met even by the court with a sour look.

A summons to court as an expert witness in a murder trial gold-starred the banner of his career. It was then that he turned back to his heavy book, used mainly to prop the door open. Out of this lexicon he dug up words to confound the wise lawyer. It was in vain that the judge commanded him to talk not like the man in the moon, but like a man of this earth; he was not to be shaken from a pedestal that had cost him sweat to mount. The jury sat amazed at his learning. Asked to explain the meaning of a term, he would proceed to heap upon it a pile of incomprehensible jargon. It was like cracking the bones of the skeleton that stood behind his door, and giving to each splinter a sesquipedalian name. When told that he might “stand down,” he walked off to enjoy his victory. At the tavern, in the evening, he might be invited to sit in the game, done with the hesitating timidity of awed respect; but at cards it was discovered that he was an easy dabbler in common talk, not to say the profanity of the flat-boatmen.

Out of this atmosphere there arises the vision of old Doctor Rickney of Mississippi. He had appeared in court as an expert witness, and the county newspaper had given him a column of monstrous words, written by the doctor himself. He had examined the judge for life insurance, and it was hinted that he had been invited to attend a meeting of the medical convention, away off in Philadelphia. His professional cup was now about to foam over, when there fell an evil time.

Bill Saunders, down with a sort of swamp fever, was told by Dr. Rickney that his recovery was impossible. Bill was stubborn, and declined to accept Doc's verdict.

“Why, you poor old sot,” said Doc, “you must be nearer the end than I thought, since you have so little mind as to doubt my word. Here's your fever so high that it has almost melted my thermometer, and yet you question my professional forecast. And, besides, don't you know that you have ruined your constitution with liquor?”

Bill blew a hot breath.

“I don't know nothin' about constitutions nur the statuary of limitations, but I'm snickered if I'm goin' to die to please you nur nobody. All I need right now is possum baked along with about a peck of yams.”

“Possum! Why, by eleven-thirty to-night you'll be as dead as any possum.”

Bill drew another hot breath, and the leaves on a branch of honeysuckle peeping in at the open window were seen to wither with heat.

“I've got a hoss out thar in the stable, Doc, an' he's jes as good as any hoss you ever rid. An' I tell you whut I'll do: I'll bet him ag'in yo' hoss that I'll be up an' around in five weeks.”

Doc gave him a pitying look.

“All right; I'll just take that bet.”

Doc told it about the neighborhood, and along toward midnight, sitting in the rear room of a drug-store, he took out his watch, looked at it, and remarked:

“Well, by this time Bill Saunders is dead, and his horse belongs to me.”

The druggist spoke.

“I know the horse, and would like to have him. What'll you take for him, Doc?”

“Take for him! That horse is worth a hundred and fifty of as bright gold dollars as was ever dug out of the earth. Take for him!” says he. “Ain't he worth it, Nick?”

Nick, a yellowish lout, was sitting on the floor, with his back against the wall. For the most part his requirement of society was a mouthful of tobacco and a place to spit, and of the latter he was not over-careful. He added no more to civilization than worm-blight adds to a grape-vine, but without him no native drama could have been written. He was as native to the neighborhood as a wrinkle is to a ram's horn. In the absence of all other wit, he knew where his interest lay. Therefore he haggled not to respond to Doc's appeal. Doc had steadied his wife down from the high shakes of ague, had time and again reminded Nick of that fact, but had not yet received the five bushels of corn and the four pumpkins of average size, the physician's legitimate levy. Here was a chance on Nick's part to throw off at least two bushels. He arose, and dusted the seat of his brown jeans.

“Doc,” said he, “nobody don't know no mo' about nobody's hoss nur I do. An' I'm sayin' it without the fear of bein' kotch in a lie that Bill's hoss is wuth two hundred an' seventy-fi' dollars of as good money as ever built a church.”

“You've heard him,” was Doc's triumphant turn to the druggist. “But let me tell you. About a half-hour from now I've got to catch the Lady Blanche for Memphis, on my way to attend the medical convention in Philadelphia. I've got to read a paper on snake-bite.”

Nick broke in upon him.

“I'll bet it's the Guv'ment that is a axin' you to do it.”

“Well, we won't discuss that,” was Doc's dismissal of the subject. Then he turned again to the druggist. “Got to get to that convention; and as I'll have a good deal of entertaining to do, I'll need a hundred extra. So you just give me a hundred dollars and take the horse. But you'll have to be quick about it, for I just heard the Lady Blanche blowing around the bend.”

The druggist snatched at the knob or his safe, swung the door open, and seized a hundred dollars.

One afternoon, five weeks later, when the Lady Blanche touched the shore on her way down, Old Doc stepped off. There on a bale of cotton, smoking a cob pipe, sat Bill Saunders.

“W'y, hello, Doc!”

Doc dropped his carpet-bag, caught up the tail of his coat, and with it blotted the sweat on his brow.

“Fine day,” said Bill. “'Lowed we'd have a little rain, but the cloud looked like it had business summers else. An' by the way, Doc, up whar you been what's that liquor as distroys the constitution wuth by the gallon?”

Doc reached down and took up his carpet-bag.

“Bill Saunders, sir, I don't want anything to do with you. I gave you my confidence, but you have deceived me. And now, sir, your lack of integrity——”

“Gives me a hoss,” Bill interrupted. “An' say, Doc, I seed the druggist man jest now, an' he said suthin' about a hundred dollars you owed him.”

Doc walked up to the cotton-bale and placed his carpet-bag on it, close beside Bill.

“Saunders,” said he, “in this thing is a pistol nearly a foot and a half long. Now I'll give you my horse all right, even if you are the most unreliable man I ever saw, and I'll pay the druggist his hundred; but if you go around the neighborhood boasting that you got well after I gave you up, something is going to flash, and it won't be out of a black bottle, either, but right out of Old Miss Betsy, here in this carpet-bag. I don't blame you for getting well, as a sort of a lark, you understand; but when you make a serious affair of it, you hurt my professional pride. Old Miss Betsy is right in here. Do you gather me?”

“I pick up yo' threads putty well, Doc, I think.”

“All right; and see that with them threads you sew up your mouth. You may be proof against the pizen of the swamp, but you ain't proof against the jolt of a lead-mine. That's all.”

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. How does the description of the doctor's home emphasize character?
2. What was the doctor's ability?
3. How does the writer make the doctor a universal character as well as a local character?
4. How does the writer produce humor?
5. How does the writer arouse our respect for the doctor?
6. How does the writer arouse our sympathy?
7. What character trait does the anecdote reveal?
8. Why does the writer use so much conversation in telling the anecdote?
9. What advantage does the writer gain by ending the sketch so abruptly?
10. How does the sketch affect the reader?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Select for your subject a person in whom you see many laughable traits, but whom you really admire. Sum up his characteristics briefly and suggestively. Make your humor the kind that will awaken smiles but not ridicule. Use exaggeration in moderation. Be particularly careful to select words that will convey the half-humorous, half-serious thought that you wish to communicate. End your sketch by telling an anecdote that will emphasize one or more of the characteristics that you have mentioned. Tell the anecdote in a “snappy” way, with crisp dialogue.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

By HELEN DAVENPORT

(1882—). Mrs. Helen Davenport Gibbons is a graduate of Bryn Mawr. Her literary work appears in various publications. Among her books are The Red Rugs of Tarsus; Les Turcs ont Passe Là!; A Little Gray Home in France; Paris Vistas.

A good essay is much like part of a conversation,—the part spoken by an interesting speaker. It is breezy, unconventional, and free in its use of familiar terms. How well all this is brought out in the following extract from an essay on Christmas.

My husband and I would not miss that day-before-Christmas last-minute rush for anything. And even if I risk seeming to talk against the sane and humane “shop-early-for-Christmas” propaganda, I am going to say that the fun and joy of Christmas shopping is doing it on the twenty-fourth. Avoid the crowds? I don't want to! I want to get right in the middle of them. I want to shove my way up to counters. I want to buy things that catch my eye and that I never thought of buying and wouldn't buy on any day in the year but December twenty-fourth. I want to spend more money than I can afford. I want to experience that panicky feeling that I really haven't enough things, and to worry over whether my purchases can be divided fairly among my quartet. I want to go home after dark, reveling in the flare of lamps lighting up mistletoe, holly wreaths, and Christmas-trees on hawkers' carts, stopping here and there to buy another pound of candy or a box of dates or a foolish bauble for the tree. I want to shove bundle after bundle into the arms of my protesting husband and remind him that Christmas comes but once a year until he becomes profane. And, once home, on what other winter evening would you find pleasure in dumping the whole lot on your bed, adding to the jumble of toys and books already purchased or sent by friends, and, all other thoughts banished, calmly making the children's piles despite aching back and legs, impatient husband, cross servants, and a dozen dinner-guests waiting in the drawing-room?

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. By what rhetorical means does the writer communicate her emotion?
2. Show how the writer makes detail contribute to effect.

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Write on a subject in which you think you are, perhaps, excusably foolish. Be frankly honest and genuinely enthusiastic. Write in such a way that you will make your readers sympathize with you in your “foolishness.”

SUNDAY BELLS

By GERTRUDE HENDERSON

At different times Miss Henderson has lived in Indiana, California and New York. During the World War she gave active patriotic service. She contributes to various publications.

The bells of Sunday have given subjects to many poets and to many essayists. Their sound is full of suggestions of peace, calm and the solemnity of worship.

The writer of the following essay expresses, as she says, the emotions of many people. It is that seizing upon what is, at the same time, intensely personal and yet universal that gives the essay its power.

Although the essay is written in a gossipy style it has a quiet spirit entirely in harmony with its subject.

Are all of us potentially devotees, I wonder. When the bells ring and I look up to the aspiring steeples against the sky in the middle of a Sunday morning, or when I hear them sounding upon the quiet of the Sunday evening dusk or sending their clear-toned invitation out through the secular bustle of the mid-week streets and in at doors and windows, summoning, summoning, there is that in me that hears them and starts up and would obey. It must be something my grandmothers left there—my long line of untraceable grandmothers back, back through the hundreds of years. I wonder if in all the other people of this questioning generation whose thoughts have separated them from the firm, sustaining certainties of the past the same ghostly allegiance rises, the same vague emotions stir and quiver at the evoking of the Sunday bells. I should think it altogether likely, for I have never found that in anything very real in me I am at all different from everybody else I meet.

The Sunday bells! I sit in the morning quiet and I hear them ringing near. They are not so golden-voiced, those first bells, as if they had been more lately made; but I think it may be they go the deeper into my feelings for that. Some people pass, leisurely at first, starting early and strolling at ease through the peaceful Sunday morning on the way to church, talking together as they go: ladies, middle-aged and elderly, the black-dressed Sunday ladies whose serene wontedness suggests that they have passed this very way to that very goal one morning in seven since their lives began; a father with his boy and girl; three frolicsome youngsters together in their Sunday clothes loitering through the sunny square with many divagations, and chattering happily as they go,—I am not so sure their blithe steps will end at the church door,—but yet they may; a young girl, fluttering pink ruffles and hurrying. I think she is going to sing in the choir and must be there early. She has the manner of one who fears she is already the least moment late for flawless earliness. Other young girls with their young men are walking consciously together in tempered Sunday sweethearting. And so on and on till the bell has rung a last summons, and the music has risen, and given way to silence, and the last belated comers have hurried by, looking at accusing watches, and gone within, to lose their consciousness of guilt in that cool interior whose concern is with eternity, not time. Along all the other streets of the diverse town I fancy them streaming, gathering in at the various doors on one business bent, obeying one impulse in their many ways, one common, deep-planted instinct that not one of them can philosophize back to its ultimate, sure source, though it masters them all—the source that is deeper than lifelong habit or childhood teaching or the tradition of the race; the source out of which all these came in their dim beginnings.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. How does the writer show that her subject has universal appeal?
2. Why does she describe people on their way to church?
3. What types of people does she mention?
4. How does the writer give the essay a quiet spirit?
5. Point out examples of repetition.
6. What is the effect of the last sentence?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Show that your subject is one that appeals to almost every person, and that it appeals to you in particular. Show the connection between your subject and various types of people. Give your essay a serious note, especially at the close.

DISCOVERY

By GEORGES DUHAMEL

(1884—). A surgeon in the service of the French army during the World War. He turned to authorship as a means of distraction from the horrors of war. His work entitled Civilization won the Goncourt Prize for Fiction. Among his other works are The New Book of Martyrs; Combat; Heart's Domain.

An open eye and an attentive ear do much to make life enjoyable,—that is the thought of Georges Duhamel's essay on Discovery. It is evident that the writer deeply appreciates the pleasure of exploration, even though the exploration be among the humblest and least-noticed objects. Perhaps some recent experience turned his attention to the thought, “Discovery is delightful.” At any rate, he has seized upon the idea,—as though it were one of the things that he has discovered,—and writes his meditation on it with the easy interest with which he observes the gravel in a bubbling brook or a lily floating on the surface of the water.

Discovery! It seems as if this word were one of a cluster of magic keys—one of those keys that make all doors open before our feet. We know that to possess is to understand, to comprehend. That, in a supreme sense, is what discovery means.

To understand the world can well be compared to the peaceful, enduring wealth of the great landowner; to make discoveries is, in addition to this, to come into sudden, overflowing riches, to have one of these sudden strokes of fortune which double a man's capital by a windfall that seems like an inspiration.

The life of a child who grows up unconstrainedly is a chain of discoveries, an enriching of each moment, a succession of dazzling surprises.

I cannot go on without thinking of the beautiful letter I received to-day about my little boy. It said:

Your son knows how to find extraordinary riches, inexhaustible treasures, even in the barrenest fields, and when I set him on the grass, I cannot guess the things he is going to bring out of it. He has an admirable appreciation of the different kinds of soil; if he finds sand, he rolls in it, buries himself in it, grabs up handfuls, and flings them delightedly over his hair. Yesterday he discovered a mole-hole, and you cannot imagine all the pleasure he took in it. He also knows the joys of a slope which one can descend on one's feet or head over heels, or by rolling, and which is also splendid for somersaults. Every rise of ground interests him, and I wish you could see him pushing his cart up them. There is a little ditch where on the edge he likes to lie with his feet at the bottom and his body pressed tight against the slope. He played interminably the other day on top of a big stone. He kept stroking it; he had truly found a new pleasure there. And as for me, I find my wealth in watching him discover all these things.

It is thus a child of fifteen months gives man lessons in appreciation.

Unfortunately, most systems of education do their best to substitute hackneyed phrases for the sense of discovery. A series of conventions are imposed on the child; he ceases to discover and experience the objects in the world in pinning them down with dry, formal labels by the help of which he can recognize them. He reduces his moral life little by little to the dull routine of classifying pins and pegs and in this fashion begins the journey to maturity.

Discover! You must discover in order to be rich. You must not be satisfied to accept the night good humoredly, to go to sleep after a day empty of all discovery. There are no small victories, no negligible discoveries; if you bring back from your day's journey the memory of the white cloud of pollen the ripe plantain lets fall in May at the stroke of your switch, it may be little, but your day is not lost. If you have only encountered on the road the tiny urn of jade which the moss delightedly balances at the end of its frail stem, it may seem little, but be patient. To-morrow will perhaps be more fruitful. If for the first time you have seen a swarm of bees go by in search of a hive, or heard the snapping pods of the broom scattering its seeds in the heat, you have nothing to complain of, and life ought to seem beautiful to you. If, on that same day, you have also enriched your collection of humanity with a beautiful or an interesting face, confess that you will go to sleep upon a treasure.

There will be days when you will be like a peaceful sovereign seated under a tree: the whole world will come to render homage to you and bring you tribute. Those will be your days of contemplation.

There will be days when you will have to take your staff and wallet and go and seek your living along the highways. On these days you must be contented with what you gain from observing, from hunting. Have no fear: it will be beautiful.

It is sweet to receive; it is thrilling to take. You must by turns charm and compel the universe. When you have gazed long at the tawny rock, with its lichens, its velvety mosses, it is most amusing to lift it up. Then you will discover its weight and the little nest of orange-bellied salamanders that live there in the cool.

You have only to lie among the hairy mints and the horse-tails to admire the religious dance of the dragon-fly going to lay its eggs in the brook, or to hear in early June the clamorous orgy of the tree-toads, drunk with love; and it is very pleasant, too, to dip one's hands in the water, to stir the gravel at the bottom, whence bubble up a thousand tiny, agile existences or to pick the fleshy stalk of the water-lily that lifts its tall head out of the depths.

There are people who have passed a plant a thousand times without ever thinking of picking one of its leaves and rubbing it between their fingers. Do this always, and you will discover hundreds of new perfumes. Each of these perfumes may seem quite insignificant, and yet when you have breathed it once, you wish to breathe it again; you think of it often, and something has been added to you.

It is an unending game, and it resembles love, this possession of a world that now yields itself, now conceals itself. It is a serious, divine game.

Marcus Aurelius,[4] whose philosophy cannot be called futile, does not hesitate, amid many austere counsels, to urge his friends to the contemplation of those natural spectacles that are always rich in meaning and suggestion. He writes:

Everything that comes forth from the works of nature has its grace and beauty. The face wrinkles in middle age, the very ripe olive is almost decomposed, but the fruit has, for all that, a unique beauty. The bending of the corn toward the earth, the bushy brows of the lion, the foam that drips from the mouth of the wild boar and many other things, considered by themselves, are far from being beautiful; nevertheless, since they are accessory to the works of nature, they embellish them and add a certain charm. Thus a man who has a sensitive soul, and who is capable of deep reflection, will see in whatever exists in the world hardly anything that is not pleasant in his eyes, since it is related in some way to the totality of things.

This philosopher is right, as the poets are right. As our days permit us, let us reflect and observe; let us never cease to see in each fragment of the great whole a pure source of happiness. Like children drawn into a marvelous dance, let us not relax our hold upon the hand that sustains us and directs us.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS

1. Point out examples of figurative language.
2. Define what the writer means by “discovery.”
3. What is the value of discovery?
4. What joy does a child possess that many grown people do not have?
5. What criticism of modern education does the writer make?
6. What is the writer's ideal of education?
7. What sort of discoveries does the writer wish people to make?
8. What powers does the writer wish people to cultivate?
9. What sort of life does the writer admire?
10. What is the advantage of quoting from Marcus Aurelius?

SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION

DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING

Think of something you do that gives you real pleasure: that is your subject. Your object is to lead other people to share in what pleases you.

Intimate, as the author does, what various thrills may be experienced. Write enthusiastically, and, if possible, with charm. Do not command your reader, but entice him into the joys that you possess. Give a supporting quotation from some one whose words will be respected.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Marcus Aurelius (121-180). A Roman emperor and soldier, author of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a book of such wise and kindly philosophy that it is still widely popular.

THE FURROWS[5]

By GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

(1874). One of the greatest of living English essayists. He is notable for originality of thought and expression. His habit of turning ideas, as it were, “upside-down,” makes his work peculiarly challenging. He has written under many types of literature. Among his books are Robert Browning; Charles Dickens; Heretics; Tremendous Trifles; Alarms and Discursions; The Victorian Age in Literature.

Many essays are like poems: from some subject that lies well within common experience they spring to a height of emotion. Such is the case with the essay that follows. Mr. Chesterton looked upon an ordinary plowed field. At once his imagination took fire and he saw in the field a significance, a beauty, that the everyday observer might not note. It is the interpretation of what Carlyle calls “the ideal in the actual” that makes Mr. Chesterton's essay so appealing.

As I see the corn grow green all about my neighborhood, there rushes on me for no reason in particular a memory of the winter. I say “rushes,” for that is the very word for the old sweeping lines of the plowed fields. From some accidental turn of a train-journey or a walking tour, I saw suddenly the fierce rush of the furrows. The furrows are like arrows; they fly along an arc of sky. They are like leaping animals; they vault an inviolable hill and roll down the other side. They are like battering battalions; they rush over a hill with flying squadrons and carry it with a cavalry charge. They have all the air of Arabs sweeping a desert, of rockets sweeping the sky, of torrents sweeping a watercourse. Nothing ever seemed so living as those brown lines as they shot sheer from the height of a ridge down to their still whirl of the valley. They were swifter than arrows, fiercer than Arabs, more riotous and rejoicing than rockets. And yet they were only thin straight lines drawn with difficulty, like a diagram, by painful and patient men. The men that plowed tried to plow straight; they had no notion of giving great sweeps and swirls to the eye. Those cataracts of cloven earth; they were done by the grace of God. I had always rejoiced in them; but I had never found any reason for my joy. There are some very clever people who cannot enjoy the joy unless they understand it. There are other and even cleverer people who say that they lose the joy the moment they do understand it. Thank God I was never clever, and could always enjoy things when I understood them and when I didn't. I can enjoy the orthodox Tory, though I could never understand him. I can also enjoy the orthodox Liberal, though I understand him only too well.