EXERCISES IN IMAGINATIVE NARRATIONS

1. Write three good jokes of not more than fifty words each. Try to choose fresh material.

2. Relate a brief anecdote which ends in some peculiar twist or "point."

3. Write a fable involving animals in the old style of narration, with the moral at the end.

4. Recount entertainingly a favorite myth.

5. Make a condensed list of five or six plots which might do for stories with a distinct moral element, but without the tag at the end. They may illustrate some general truth, trait, or human nature in general.

6. Compose a dialogue between at least three people, all of them speaking on one broad subject, but with very distinct ideas. Bring it to some interesting point at the end.

7. Retell orally the main incidents of any short poem like one of the old English and Scottish ballads, one of the metrical romances by Scott (single canto), or a simple story by Longfellow or Tennyson. 8. A well-meaning lad has fallen into difficulty because of carelessness and inattention. Give his version of it and that of some other person. Suggestions:

The boy himself; the teacher who does not understand him. The boy; the policeman who has caught him in a Halloween prank.

The boy expelled from school; the report of the school authorities.

The boy inside the circus tent; the employee who rightly or wrongly accuses him of getting under the canvas.

The sympathetic juvenile court judge.

The youthful offender.

9. Write a dialect story; negro, Irish, Jewish, Scotch, Cockney English, French, Italian, or Chinese.

10. Write a narrative of some real or imaginary personal experience, using one of the sentences given here as the conclusion.

And then I cried. I was sent away from the table. "You have talked enough," said my mother positively. Then I awakened. I was glad to escape that time at least. They did not hesitate before considering my case.

11. Tell in three or four hundred words some real or imaginary personal experience. Try for vividness and human interest.

I forgot to mail that letter; why I don't swim there now; childhood ambitions; shopping; canvassing in the summer; on the witness stand; losing the train; caught "borrowing" flowers; forgetting the "piece" I was to speak; on the edge of a cliff, — in a dream; over the fence just in time; my first business venture; some of my aversions; my idea of the sandman; alone in the dark. 12. Write a narrative to show character in dialogue. Carry on the story largely by conversation.

An old couple at the circus; talking to himself; "I wouldn't tell for all the world"; sister's beaux and I; "you are just horrid, so there"; informing company about our folks; explaining the plays at a baseball game; holiday in a small town; "it is just as good"; "when is the next mail due?"

13. Write a narrative as told by a dog, a horse, a boat, a Thanksgiving turkey, a shark, a locomotive, an airplane.

14. Some of the situations mentioned below may be developed into interesting narratives.

a. The village loafer turns hero.

b. A worthless fellow takes the place of a friend who is being punished unjustly.

c. Under the honor system in examinations, a student has been convicted of cheating. He is really innocent.

d. Largely because of violation of the rules, a college obtains an athletic trophy. What should be done about it afterward if there was no intentional dishonesty?

e. One suddenly discovers that he has acquired the power of seeing some of what is going on at a great distance.

f. A man long absent from home returns to claim a legacy. Nearly all his former acquaintances refuse to recognize his identity. Then a rival claimant appears. Both men look very much alike.

g. After a great endeavor for a long period of time, a man attains what he has striven for, only to find it worthless.

h. A lady keeps her diamonds in her purse done up in a dollar bill. What might happen to them?

i. A student invites two girls in succession to attend a dance with him. Both refuse, and each reconsiders and accepts at the last minute. What shall he do, having told each that he will not ask another partner?

15. Write a story with historical setting. Let the fictional characters converse with well-known people.

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XIX

THE STUDY OF NOVELS

121. Novels are not elongated short stories. Long fictions imitate human nature in its many aspects, whereas short ones cut it across in a section, giving only a narrow view or a small part of the whole. Thus the short story is centralized; it depends for its interest upon one situation, a single group of people or sometimes even on one person, and also upon a single group of scenes. Novels, on the other hand, weave a complex fabric of incident, character, and background, which includes many places, a multitude of incidents, and at least several persons.

122. Kinds of novels. Properly speaking the novel itself limits its material to real human life. Not that it records only what people actually do; for it has considerable latitude in viewing and explaining, while at the same time not distorting or idealizing the truth. Thus the novel keeps close to probability. The romance, on the contrary, tends to idealize human nature, or to show humanity at its best, whether it deals with truth or imaginary events. Our best romances, it is true, do not exceed the bounds of possibility, unless they advertise themselves as unreal or absurd throughout. Thus the romance often treats of emotions on a high plane. It does not necessarily have human affection as its central motive. Nor does the novel avoid a love plot. George Eliot's Mill on the Floss, for instance, is usually called a novel, but love is one of its chief interests. It pictures

somewhat truthfully life in a certain district of England one hundred years ago. Then it also adds impressions and early experiences of Marian Evans, its author. Blackmore's Lorna Doone, for two good reasons, may be called a romance. The whole narrative is dignified by a suffused emotion and finds its typical expression in a rhythmic swing, which at times approaches genuine poetry. The novel is romantic because it also pictures life from the ideal or highly imaginative viewpoint. Though it has enough historical and political background to save it from being wholly fictional, it is nevertheless on the romantic and somewhat improbable events that it stakes its reputation. And who would deny that Lorna Doone is one of our sweetest and noblest books?

Another form which is somewhat of a hybrid of both long and short stories is the novelette. It is too short to be called a true novel, and too discursive and complex to be called a genuine short story. In the nature of brevity it seems more to resemble an abbreviated novel. Henry James, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain have all given us what some choose to call novelettes. Several of the stories of James are more than a hundred pages in length, lacking the unity of the short narrative, and yet not attaining the breadth of the full-length novel.

123. Out of many older formless types, the novel developed rather slowly. Like shorter narratives it passed through different stages from early times to the era of the Elizabethans. In the time of Shakespeare, John Lyly wrote a book called Euphues, which found its way to almost every drawing room table and established a vogue. This and similar narratives touched upon etiquette, natural history, philosophy, and kindred subjects that are now treated in separate volumes. The two things necessary to the best novels - consistent plotting and clear

characterization in large degree were held in the background to make way for long disquisitions on many subjects. Thus it remained for Defoe in his Robinson Crusoe to emphasize the element of adventure in a consistent, fairly unified plot. Whether this or Euphues should be called our first novel, or whether we shall say that there was no real novel before the time of Richardson in 1740, will depend largely on our individual definitions of the form. At any rate the works of Defoe center upon a few incidents, which are emphasized, and the people of his works are fairly consistent and uniformly individualized.

Shortly before 1740 a London printer named Samuel Richardson began to write a series of familiar letters for a bookseller. These at first contained little or no narrative, but merely sought to inculcate polite manners and good morals. After a time the author secured permission to weave a story into his letters, and the result was the fiction called Pamela, which in collected form was first issued in 1740. Richardson followed this novel at intervals by publishing Clarissa Harlowe, the story of a noble heroine, and Sir Charles Grandison, an account of the faultless gentleman. In the trilogy he considered life from three points of view, that of a humble but virtuous serving maid; that of a middle class girl, misunderstood by her parents and making a fatal mistake in intrusting herself with a man who at last betrayed her; and finally that of a man who was capable of all goodness and nobility of character, but who was too superlatively fine for such a world as ours. Richardson's motives were unquestionably high, but he sometimes fell into absurd methods. He was criticized by Henry Fielding, who soon began to publish realistic fictions, the best of which is Tom Jones, one of our studies of a faulty but generous young man. Tales of the sea and other realisms were contributed by