FOOTNOTES:

Edgeworth: "Murad the Unlucky."Hawthorne: "The Wedding Knell;" "The Prophetic Pictures."James: "The Real Thing;" "The Lesson of the Master."Poe: "The Masque of the Red Death;" "'Thou Art the Man!'"Stockton: "The Transferred Ghost."Wilkins: "The Revolt of Mother;" "Two Old Lovers."The title may represent the principal character by name or by some apt appellation:Davis: "Gallegher."Hawthorne: "The Ambitious Guest;" "Feathertop."Irving: "The Spectre Bridegroom;" "Rip Van Winkle."Poe: "Morella;" "Ligeia."Stevenson: "Markheim."Wilkins: "A Modern Dragon;" "A Kitchen Colonel."The title may mention the principal object:Adee: "The Life Magnet."Burnett: "The Spider's Eye."Hawthorne: "The Great Stone Face;" "The Great Carbuncle."James: "The Aspern Papers."Kipling: "The Phantom 'Rickshaw."Poe: "The Black Cat;" "The Gold Bug."Stevenson: "The Bottle Imp."FOOTNOTES:[18]"Literary Chat."Munsey's Magazine.May, '98.[19]"Misleading Titles of Books," by William Mathews.The Saturday Evening Post.Apr. 21, 1900.VTHE USE OF FACTSAllfiction is founded upon fact, for the boldest imagination must have some definite point from which to take its flight; but the ungarnished truth is seldom literature in itself, though it may offer excellent material for literary embellishment. The amateur, content with knowing that he is recounting what did actually happen, falls into the most inartistic ways, because he does not understand that facts are properly only crude material for the fictionist.The one place where the average short story writer shouldnotseek his material is the world of literature. Almost from the time when men first began to dabble in letters they have drawn on their predecessors for their subject matter; but this practice has produced a deal of unconscious plagiarism, which is responsible for most of the conventional and stereotyped stories with which we are afflicted to-day. Of any one hundred average stories submitted forsale, probably seventy-five are damned by their hopelessly hackneyed conception and treatment; and they suffer because the writer, reading some attractive story built upon a similar plot, has attempted to go and do likewise, and has unconsciously used all the conventional parts while omitting the essential individuality.It is safe for the novice to go only to the world for literary material. The matter so obtained will be intrinsically the same as that gained from the writings of others, but the fact that you get your information through your own senses will considerably obviate the danger of adopting the conventional view in the matter. I do not mean to say that you should deliberately set out to search for new types and incidents as Dickens did, though I would certainly commend such a course; I mean rather that you should be content to write of what you personally and intimately know, and not attempt to treat of matters of which you have only a vague superficial knowledge, or of which you are totally ignorant. Excellent stories have been written by men who were personally unacquainted with the matters with which they dealt, but they were in every case masters of their art, who knew how to gain and use second-hand information and how to supplement insufficient data with literary skill.Too many novices have the mistaken idea that only those things which are dim and distant are fit for artistic treatment. They have not cultivated their powers of perception, and have failed to grasp the truth that human nature is in most respects the same the world over, and that persons and places, apparently the most ordinary, have stories to tell. Before Mary E. Wilkins began to write her New England tales few thought to look to those bleak hills and commonplace people for literary material; and doubtless many New Englanders, feeling the impulse to write, viewed with scorn their unpoetic surroundings and longed for the glamour of some half-guessed clime; Miss Wilkins, appreciating her environment, won fame and fortune through her truthful depictions of those things which others, equally able to write but less able to see, had despised.It is a common trick of aspiring writers to locate their stories in England, to speak proudly but uncertainly of grand estates, noble castles, and haughty lords and ladies, and to make mistakes which would be ridiculous were they not so inexcusable. There is a certain half-feudal glamour about England yetwhich appeals strongly to the callow author: it lends that rosy haze of romance and unreality which is popularly associated with fiction; but it was long ago done to death by mediocre writers and laughed out of good literary society, and to-day America will not suffer any such hackneyed fol-de-rol.Similarly the amateur will locate his story in the "best" society of some American metropolis, when he has never been out of his native village, and knows nothing of the class with which he deals except through the society column of his newspaper. Therefore he will of course "fall flat when he attempts to delineate manners. It is too evident that he has not had theentreeto the circle he would describe: his gentlemen commit too many blunders, his ladies are from the wrong side of the town, the love-passages are silly and vulgar, the whole result is stupid and offensive—to those who know. The thing hopelessly lacks tone; it might pass below stairs, but not in the drawing-room."[20]It is not only those of wealth and leisure who are eligible for literary purposes; indeed, their lives, apparently so gay and exciting, are often a dull andregular series of attempts to kill the dawdling time. If the young writer would look into the lives of his own simple neighbors he would find much better matter for his intended stories.Again, the novice, in his search for something different, will place his tale in the dim and distant past, when all men were brave and all women lovely; and in so doing will expose himself to ridicule and contempt for his evident ignorance of the matters of which he pretends to treat. It is very probable that any age seems dull and commonplace to those who live in it, for "familiarity breeds contempt" for almost anything; but though we of to-day have no valiant knights, armed cap-a-pie, riding forth to the jousts to do battle for their ladies fair, we have men just as brave and deeds fully as valorous and far more sensible; and the world is, and always will be, full of noble and romantic and marvelous things.If, however, you feel that you must write of times and scenes and peoples which are either past or foreign, it is your first duty to inform yourself to the best of your ability concerning them. I do not believe that any writer can successfully locate his story in a foreign country unless he has personal knowledge of the scenes and persons that he describes, orunless he is thoroughly versed in the language and literature of the country—and in the latter case he would probably be too pedantic to write readable stories. At first thought it does not seem so difficult to handle English subjects, for there we have the advantage of a common language and, to a considerable extent, of common racial traits; but even that common language, as spoken on the other side of the Atlantic, has an every-day vocabulary differing from ours, and the English government and social system present difficulties almost insurmountable to one who cannot study them face to face. In dealing with themes of the past there is more opportunity. There we are all on the common ground of an absolute dependence on such books as may preserve for us pictures of those times, and complete information—complete, at least, in the sense that no one knows more—can be had at the price of a certain number of hours of painstaking study. If, then, you desire to write of the days that are gone, see to it that you first thoroughly acquaint yourself with the history of those times. There are few towns too small to possess a library, and few libraries too small to contain such historical books as you may need.In these days when all things come to Mohamet, the writer may gain a valuable though impersonal insight into the world at large through the medium of the public press. The newspapers of to-day are full of incipient plots, needing only the skillful pen to make them literature. Reporters go everywhere and see everything, and they place the result of their multifarious labors in your hands every morning. They recount actual happenings accurately enough for literary purposes, they strain for the unusual side of things, and their purpose is too different from yours to make you liable to the charge of plagiarism if you rework their material. The receptive perusal of any newspaper ought to furnish the reader with a fresh stock of literary material. Such matter is particularly valuable to the short story writer because of the present and ever increasing demand for stories of the day, plots, characters, situations, and local color for which may be culled from any newspaper.But short story writing is an art, and all facts may not be capable of literary treatment. "Even actual occurrences may be improper subjects for fiction. Nature can take liberties with facts that art dare not—a truth that has passed into a proverb....Art may fill us with anger, fear, terror, awe, but the moment it condescends to excite disgust, it passes out of the realm of art."[21]"There seems no reason why the artist should not choose any subject, if the production itself contributes to the satisfaction of the world, making a picture of life, or of a phase of life, in compliance with the demands of art, beauty, and truth. Taste is the arbiter of the subject, for taste is always moral, always on the side of the angels. There are certain things which are only subjects for technical reform, for the sanitary inspector, and for the physician—not for the novelist."[22]"The carnage of a battle-field, the wrecked café or theatre after dynamite has done its work, had best be handled sparingly.... A good many things that happen on this planet are not good subjects for art: the pathetic (within limits) is always in order, but not the shocking. Moral are worse than physical horrors."[23]"Even genius may waste itself on an unmanageable theme; it cannot makethe cleaning of fish interesting, nor the slums of New York or Paris attractive."[24]It is rare indeed that a fact can be used without embellishment. Mere facts are frequently most unliterary, though they may be susceptible of a high literary polish. The sub-title "A True Story," which young writers think so valuable a part of the tale, is too often the trademark of an unreadable mess of conventional people, ordinary incidents and commonplace conversation. We find few genuinely true stories, and when we do find them we seldom care to read them through. I have read many stories which I knew to be literally true, because they contained so much of the hackneyed and the irrelevant. Life itself is a very conventional affair; it abounds with dull events and stupid people; and for that reason alone fiction would demand something out of the common. Commonplace persons and commonplace things do appear in literature, but they must have something more than their commonplaceness to recommend them."The novice in story telling ... has heard that truth is stranger than fiction, and supposes thatthe more truth he can get into his tale the stronger and more effective it will be.... Truth,i. e., reality, is very seldom strange; it is usually tame and flat and commonplace; and when it is strange it is apt to be grotesque and repulsive. Most of the experiences of daily life afford material only for a chronicle of dulness; and most of the 'strange' or unusual happenings had better be left to the newspaper and the records of the police courts. This statement may be strengthened. Does not the able reporter select and decorate his facts, suppressing some, emphasizing others, arranging his 'story' with reference to picturesqueness and effect?"In other words, verisimilitude, not verity, is wanted in fiction. The observer notes his facts, and then the artist seizes on the ideas behind them, the types they represent, the spiritual substances they embody. The result, when all goes well, is as lifelike as life itself, though it is not a copy of anything (in detail) that really lives.... The budding writer of fictitious tales must be familiar with facts, at least in his own range: he must know life and nature, or his work is naught. But when he has this knowledge, he must put the facts in the background of his mind.... Real incidents, draggedagainst their will into an (alleged) imaginary narrative, are apt by no means to improve it, but to sound as 'flat and untunable' as our own praises from our own mouths."[25]"There must be no misconception about great fiction being a transcript of life. Mere transcription is not the work of an artist, else we should have no need of painters, for photographers would do; no poems, for academical essays would do; no great works of fiction, for we have our usual sources of information—if information is all we want—the Divorce Court, the Police Court, the Stock Exchange, the Young Ladies' Seminary, the Marriage Register, and the House of Parliament—those happy hunting-grounds of sensation-mongers and purveyors of melodrama. All these things certainly contain the facts of life which one must know for the constructive work of the imagination, for they are the rough material, the background of knowledge from which the illusion of real life must proceed. But they are not life, though they are the transcription of life. The human significance of facts is all that concerns one. The inwardness of facts makesfiction; the history of life, its emotions, its passions, its sins, reflections, values. These you cannot photograph nor transcribe. Selection and rejection are two profound essentials of every art, even of the art of fiction, though it be so jauntily practised by the amateur."[26]And even if the facts which you purpose to use are of undoubted value for artistic treatment, there may be other reasons which make their use questionable. In the first place, people do not really prefer truth to fiction. They require plausibility, but they are all too familiar with life themselves, and in the idle hours in which they turn to fiction they desire to be lifted out of reality into the higher realm of fancy. Nor will they, even in the form of fiction, tolerate what seems like too gross an invasion of the privacy of the home, or the sanctity of the soul of a man. They must always feel vaguely that the suffering characters are really only puppets created for their amusement, or their pity for the characters will develop into anger and disgust for the author.In using facts, then, the first thing to learn is what to suppress and what to elaborate, and thatinvolves that most necessary possession of the story teller, a sense of proportion. Because a conversation about the weather occupies two dull people for ten minutes is no reason that it should receive an equal number of pages; and because an important event is almost instantaneous is no excuse for passing it with a single line. Again, the fact that you are relating what actually occurred does not relieve you of the necessity of making it plausible. Painters acknowledge that there are color combinations in nature which they dare not reproduce, lest they be dubbed unnatural; and similarly things exist which the writer may present only after he has most carefully prepared the way for their credence. The truth is that we have declared that even nature shall conform to certain conventions, and we reject as impossible any deviations from our preconceived ideas.The facts upon which Hawthorne built "The Ambitious Guest" are these:—The White Hills of which he speaks (¶ 1) are the famous White Mountains of New Hampshire; the Notch (¶ 1) is the real name of a real mountain pass, which is just as he describes it; the Flume (¶ 22) is a waterfall not far from the Notch; the valley of the Saco (¶ 1) is really where he places it. The references to Portland(¶ 3), Bartlett (¶ 5), Burlington (¶ 7), Bethlehem and Littleton (¶ 18) are all references to real places in the vicinity. At the point where Hawthorne locates his story there actually was a mountain tavern called the Willey House, and a modern inn stands on the spot to-day. Concerning the catastrophe which he describes I found the following account:"Some time in June—before the great 'slide' in August, 1826—there came a great storm, and the old veteran, Abel Crawford, coming down the Notch, noticed the trees slipping down, standing upright, and, as he was passing Mr. Willey's he called and informed him of the wonderful fact. Immediately, in a less exposed place, Mr. Willey prepared a shelter to which to flee in case of immediate danger; and in the night of August 28th, that year, he was, with his family, awakened by the thundering crash of the coming avalanche. Attempting to escape, that family, nine in number, rushed from the house and were overtaken and buried alive under a vast pile of rocks, earth, trees and water. By a remarkable circumstance the house remained uninjured, as the slide divided about four rods back of the house (against a high flat rock), and came down on either side with overwhelming power."[27]The book goes on to state further that the familyconsisted of the father and mother, five children—the eldest a girl of thirteen—and two hired men. The bodies of the parents, the oldest and youngest children, and the two hired men were found.It is probable that Hawthorne derived his information from the newspapers, though he may have heard the story by word of mouth, for there is little doubt that he actually visited the spot where the catastrophe occurred. But the bald facts of the case, however gained, are essentially as we have them here, and that is sufficient for our purpose.In writing his story Hawthorne took several liberties with the facts. He made no change in the location because even he could not improve upon the scene for such a story. He changed the month from August to September (¶ 1) to make plausible, perhaps, the rain necessary for such a slide, and to make seasonable the bitter wind which he introduces. He omitted all names to add to the air of unsolved mystery that haunts the story. He introduced the guest (¶ 4) and the grandmother (¶ 1), increased the age of the daughter (¶ 1), retained the parents and younger children (¶ 1) and omitted the hired men to suit the requirements of his story. He omitted the warning but retained the establishmentof a place of refuge (¶ 9) to heighten the climax. He used the flight from the house (¶ 42) because it just suited his purpose. He retained the strange preservation of the house (¶ 42) to increase the air of mystery, and to intensify the tragedy by making it appear in a manner unnecessary. He suppressed the finding of any of the bodies (¶ 42) to aid the plausibility of his narrative, and to increase the pathos of the guest's death.Compare carefully the account given by Spaulding and the story of Hawthorne, for you have here an excellent illustration of the difference between the commonplace recital of facts and their transformation into a work of art. Spaulding's relation is a true story, but Hawthorne's is literature.FOOTNOTES:[20]"Bad Story-Telling," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's.Oct., '97.[21]"Rudimentary Suggestions for Beginners in Story Writing," by E. F. Andrews.Cosmopolitan.Feb., '97.[22]"The Art of Fiction." A lecture by Gilbert Parker.The Critic.Dec., '98.[23]"Magazine Fiction and How Not to Write It," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's.Nov., '94.[24]"Bad Story-Telling," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's, Oct., '97.[25]"Fact in Fiction," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's, July, '95.[26]"The Art of Fiction." A lecture by Gilbert Parker.The Critic.Dec., '98.[27]"Historical Relics of the White Mountains," by John H. Spaulding. (Boston, 1855.) "Destruction of the Willey Family," page 58.VITHE CHARACTERSItis the tritest sort of a truism to say that the characters in a story are important, for stories are stories only in so far as they reflect life, and life is impossible without human actors. It is the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the sins and moral victories of men that interest us. We men are a conceited lot, and find nothing of interest except as it relates to us. Thus in the most ingenious stories, where some marvelous invention or discovery is introduced, the interest centers, not in the wondrous things themselves, but in their influence on the people of the story; and in the few stories where a beast or a thing plays the hero, it is always given human attributes.Fictitious characters, like the plots that they develop, are based primarily on fact, and they further resemble the plots in being different phases of a primal idea, rather than intrinsically diverse. We find many characters in fiction—Miss Wilkins' storiesare full of them—which are evidently meant to be realistic, and which impress us as word photographs of existing persons; yet it is improbable that they are exact reproductions. A real person ordinarily has too much of the commonplace and conventional about him to serve in fiction, where—despite the apparent paradox—a character must be exaggerated to appear natural. A person in fiction is at the best but a blur of hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper, and can be comprehended only through the mentality of the author; therefore his description, his actions, his words, his very thoughts must be made so unnaturally striking that through the sense of sight alone they will stimulate the imagination and produce the effect which actual contact with the real person would induce. The character which seems most real is usually a composite of the most striking characteristics of several real persons. To this source of fictitious characters is due the fact that a literary puppet is often thought to be the reproduction of several very different real persons; for the reader, recognizing a particular trait which is characteristic of some one of his acquaintance, thinks that he recognizes the character."While the popular idea that every creature ofthe novelist's imagination has a definite original somewhere among his acquaintances is, of course, egregiously false, it has yet this much of truth, that they are, to a large extent, suggestions from life. Not one person, but half a dozen, often sit as models for the same picture, while the details are filled out by the writer's imagination. There are few people in real life sufficiently interesting or uncommonplace to suit the novelist's purpose, but he must idealize or intensify them before they are fit subjects for art. Dickens intensified to the verge of the impossible, yet we never feel that Dick Swiveller and Sam Weller and Mr. Micawber, and the rest of them, are unnatural; they are only, if I may coin the word, 'hypernatural.' It is the business of art to idealize. Even at its best art is so inferior to nature, that in order to produce the same impression it has to intensify its effects; to deepen the colors, heighten the contrasts, omit an object here, exaggerate an outline there, and so on, until it has produced the proper picturesque effect."[28]A careful description of the appearance of the characters may be necessary to the understandingof the story, as in Irving's perfect picture of Ichabod Crane in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"; but in our model the people are rather typical than individual, and Hawthorne devotes but little space to their external characteristics. A word or a phrase suffices to tell us all that is necessary to enable our minds to body them forth. Even the hero is outwardly distinguished only by a melancholy expression—a slight of which no school-girl "authoress" would have been guilty. It is more often necessary to give the mental characteristics of the puppets, and in "The Ambitious Guest" we have a deal of such detail concerning the young stranger; but here, too, you must exercise forbearance, as Hawthorne did in his partial analysis of the other characters.It is by no means essential that the personages of a short story be attractive in person or in character. The taste of readers used to be so artificial that no romancer would have dared to present a heroine who was not perfect in face and figure, or a hero who was not an Apollo for manly beauty; but in these more practical days we have substituted good deeds for good looks and have made our characters more human—our men more manly and our women morewomanly; and we exalt them now for heroic acts, rather than heroic mould.A mistake which it seems hard for the novice to avoid is that of telling everything possible about a character and leaving nothing to the imagination of the reader. This exhaustive method leads to a multiplicity of detail which verges on baldness, and which is very apt to contain considerable irrelevant matter; the details are usually arranged with little regard for their true value; and the intended description becomes a mere catalogue of personal charms. For example, in these three descriptions, detailed though they are, there is nothing to distinguish the particular person described from the scores of other people possessing the same general traits:He was a tall, deep-chested, broad-shouldered man, having a light complexion, dark moustache, hair and eyes.We will take a look at our heroine, as she sits lazily rocking, the sunshine touching her hair. She is of medium height, with black hair and eyes and a winning smile that makes friends for her everywhere.Lura was yet but a slight school girl; she was now fifteen and equally as large as Grace. She looked very beautiful as she came out to meet Grace and Mrs. Morton, on their return from the village. Her dark brown hairhad been carefully combed back, but the short locks had fallen and formed in ringlets about the snowy neck and face. Her large gray eyes were bright. Her full curved lips were red, and in laughing and talking revealed two rows of small, even, pearly white teeth. Her cheeks were round and well formed; although at the present time they bore no marks of roses, they were generally rosy. The gray eyes, by the changing of the expression, often became almost black and greatly completed her beauty.Clever character depiction consists in selecting and presenting only those salient details which will serve to body forth rather a vague image, which shall yet possess a definite personality, to which the reader may give such distinctness as his imagination may impart to the hints offered. It is in a manner building a complete character upon a single characteristic, after the familiar method of Dickens. It is this impressionistic method which is most used by masters to picture those characters which seem to us real persons.In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving thus describes the hero (?), Ichabod Crane, and the heroine, Katrina Van Tassel:The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrowshoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at the top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge, ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and foreign fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam, the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.Here are Hawthorne's pictures of Beatrice and her father in "Rappaccini's Daughter":On again beholding Beatrice the young man was even startled to perceive how much her beauty exceeded his recollection of it—so brilliant, so vivid in its character, that she glowed amid the sunlight, and, as Giovanni whispered to himself, positively illuminated the more shadowy intervals of the garden path. Her face being now more revealed than on the former occasion, he was struck by its expression of simplicity and sweetness—qualities that had not entered into his idea of her character, and which made him ask anew what manner of mortal she might be. Nor did he fail again to observe or imagine an analogy between the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gem-like flowers over the fountain—a resemblance which Beatrice seemed to have indulged a fantastic humor in heightening both by the arrangement of her dress and the selection of its hues.His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow and sickly-looking man dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, and a thin gray beard and a face singularly marked with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.And this is the way Dickens sets forth Scrooge, the old miser, in "A Christmas Carol":Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitaryas an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.There is very little of the catalogue style of description here; indeed, the characters can hardly be said to be described: the author gives rather the sensations which they produced on observers and so excites similar sensations in the mind of the reader.When once introduced the characters should be allowed to work out their identities with the least possible interference from the author. Their characteristics must not be listed like invoices of goods: they must themselves display the psychological powers with which they were endowed by their creator. Their speeches and actions must seem the results of mental processes, and must appear natural, if not logical; indeed, it is an open question if they can be both at once, for there are few people who are always logical. One good method of presenting the characteristics of a fictitious personage is to indulge in a bit of mind reading, and give his thoughts as hethinks them; another and better way is to show the man actuated by his dominant mental qualities. In "The Cask of Amontillado" Poe builds a whole story on an elaboration of the latter method, and presents the picture of a man temporarily mastered by the spirit of revenge. It is only by thus allowing the characters to work out their own destinies that you can make them real; otherwise they will appear as mere painted puppets, without life or volition.On account of the technical limitations of the short story the number of characters which may have principal or "speaking" parts is very small—in general only two, and frequently but one. There are usually other characters present to help out the action, but they are merely supernumeraries, without form, life or influence. There are many violations of this rule, I admit, among them such stories as Hawthorne's "The Great Stone Face," "The Seven Vagabonds," and "The Great Carbuncle;" but analysis shows them to be panoramic or episodic in effect, and really violating the unity of action which the short story demands. For similar reasons the characters presented must be unnaturally isolated, with little past and less future, and most strangely lacking in relatives; for the fewthousand words of the short story permit but a cursory treatment of the ancestry, birth, breeding and family of the one or two important characters. If by any trick they can be made the last of a long line, and be snatched from obscurity into the momentary glare of the lime light, so much the better for author, reader and character; but if some portion of their history bears upon the story, let it be presented by subtle touches, preferably by references in the dialogue, so that the reader obtains the necessary knowledge without being conscious of the means.The few real characters in the story must be made unusually interesting on account of their loneliness. They compose the story, they represent the human race, and if they fail us we are in sad straits. They must be individual; they must stand out sharply from the page, clear and attractive, and leave no doubt of their personalities. More than any other form of fiction, the short story depends upon its hero and heroine, who have "star parts" and monopolize the stage of action. We must see them so vividly that when they speak and act we shall perceive them as actual personages. It is such accuracy of depiction that makes Rip Van Winkle, Sherlock Holmes, VanBibber, and a host of others enter into our thoughts and speech as if they had really lived.The names with which we label these dolls may be of importance. In these days names have little significance, yet we still feel that a name from its very sound may be appropriate or otherwise, and no careful writer would give to his characters appellations selected at random. Names are frequently used to good advantage as aids to character depiction or to enhance humorous effects, as in the case of Hawthorne's Feathertop and Monsieur du Miroir, and Irving's Ichabod Crane, and in many other instances familiar to readers of Dickens."Dickens's names are marvelously apt, as we see from the passing into common phrase of so many of them. Not a few have become synonyms for the kind of character to which they were attached.... If a name is to hint at character it should do so in the subtlest manner possible—in a manner so subtle as to escape all but the quickwitted, who will forgive the inartistic method in their pride at being so clever as to detect the writer's intention.... In these days, when craftsmanship is cared for and looked for more than ever, ... novelists must sacrificenothing that will lend a trick of reality to their imaginings. If they take any pains to select names for their characters they should hit upon such as will be seen to suit them when their books have been read (like Sir Willoughby Patterne or Gabriel Oak); names that attempt with clumsy impertinence to give a clew to character at the outset are best left to the inept amateur of letters who has not wit enough to dispense with such aid."To be avoided, also, are out-of-the-way names that may have living owners in the real world. No John Smith or Tom Jones can complain if writers christen their characters after them; but if a man owns a peculiar name he dislikes having it borrowed and attached to some figure in fiction whose proceedings very likely do it little credit.... Every writer must know the satisfaction that comes when an 'exquisitely right' name is hit upon. But it is just as well to take reasonable precautions to avoid indignant protests such as that which Hawthorne drew upon himself"[29]for his use of the name Judge Pyncheon in "The House of the Seven Gables."The dramatic trend of the short story is responsible for its tendency to advance action by speech. Good short stories have been written and will be written which contain little or no dialogue; they succeed through vividness of plot, skill in character depiction, ingenuity of construction, or some such quality; but they would be more interesting and more natural if they held more conversation. A short story should be full of talk of the proper kind; there are few people who preserve silence at all times, and in the exciting moments which a short story usually presents, most persons would find tongue to voice their teeming thoughts. Speech adds naturalness and vividness to the actors, it lends them a personal interest, it gives insight into character, and it aids the development of the plot.This is a modern tendency, for the stories of Kipling, Stevenson, Wilkins, Davis and Doyle contain much more of the conversational element than those of Poe, Hawthorne or Irving. Where the latter would present a mental struggle or a crisis by some paragraphs of description, the former express it in the short exciting words of the actors themselves; even soliloquies and asides and other of the most mechanical devices of the drama are forced into the service of the short story, to replace the long explanatory passages such as were used by Irving. It has been predicted that in the short story of the future the characters will be briefly introduced and then will be allowed to speak for themselves; if this prophecy comes true we shall have stories similar to Hope's "The Dolly Dialogues," or Howells' little dramas, where there is almost no comment by the author. It is more probable, though, that there is something of a "fad" in the present liking for pure dialogue, and that the short story will never attain the absolute purity of the drama.If these fictitious personages are to talk, however, they must talk naturally and interestingly—and "there's the rub!" As in real life a man often shows himself to be a fool when he begins to talk, so in fiction a character frequently proves to be but a poor puppet of straw when he opens his mouth. The only way to make your characters talk naturally is to imitate the speech of the persons whom they in some degree represent. People in general do not talk by book: they use colloquial language, full of poor grammar, slang, and syncopated words; and their sentences are neither always logical nor complete. In reproducing this, however, you must "edit" it a little, using your own judgment as towhich are the characteristic idioms; for the speech of the people in books is admittedly a little better than in real life—except in dialect stories, where it is usually worse; and you must avoid equally the heavy rhetorical style of the extreme romantic school, and the inane commonplaces of the radical realists.Conversation like the following is commonly termed "bookish"; it is painfully correct and laboriously profound—but it is not natural. If it were meant for a burlesque upon polite and "cultured" society it would be exquisite, but it is the manner in which the writer believes people really talk, though it is easy to guess that he himself is far from such absurd affectations in his familiar speech."By way of preliminary, I have to say that my name is Athlee—Felix Athlee, and yours is Miss India Lemare. I've seen you before.""In the flesh, I hope," she answered."Yes, I like you better that way, though you now wear the expression of one older in years and experience. Wherefore, may I ask?""Shadows fall on the young as well as the old. One is fortunate, indeed, to keep always in the sunshine.""And flit like the butterfly, without volition or effort? Human appointments are different. Work is theinevitable, and with the proper tools, it is pleasant enough.""They must, long ago, have rusted, for the want of use.""No, we have simply to consider our specialty and we find them ready at hand. Have you done so?""I am dazed, and my brain works capriciously.""Except in the interest of your desires. What are they?""Wealth for independence, leisure for indulgence, and fame, the outcome of talent."His luminous eyes looked out over the water, as he said: "The universal hunt of mankind is for happiness, and he searches for it in as many ways as there are peculiarities of disposition. Does he ever really find it? Many weary hearts are covered with the soft down of wealth. Mischief lurks in indulgence, and fame dazzles but to elude. It is wiser to accept what the gods give, and use the gifts for the betterment of others as well as ourselves.""Meaningless words, when one is at enmity with the gods for withholding. What fine spun theories we mortals have!"To the listener every conversation contains a deal of commonplace: it may be that the speakers really have nothing interesting to say, and it may be that their conversation is so personal as to interest themselves only. The reader occupies the position of a listener, and it is the duty of the author to suppressall commonplace dialogue, unless, as sometimes happens, it assists in plot or character development. Conversation like the following is—let us hope—interesting to the parties concerned, but the reader would be delivered from it as from a plague.

Edgeworth: "Murad the Unlucky."

Hawthorne: "The Wedding Knell;" "The Prophetic Pictures."

James: "The Real Thing;" "The Lesson of the Master."

Poe: "The Masque of the Red Death;" "'Thou Art the Man!'"

Stockton: "The Transferred Ghost."

Wilkins: "The Revolt of Mother;" "Two Old Lovers."

The title may represent the principal character by name or by some apt appellation:

Davis: "Gallegher."Hawthorne: "The Ambitious Guest;" "Feathertop."Irving: "The Spectre Bridegroom;" "Rip Van Winkle."Poe: "Morella;" "Ligeia."Stevenson: "Markheim."Wilkins: "A Modern Dragon;" "A Kitchen Colonel."

Davis: "Gallegher."

Hawthorne: "The Ambitious Guest;" "Feathertop."

Irving: "The Spectre Bridegroom;" "Rip Van Winkle."

Poe: "Morella;" "Ligeia."

Stevenson: "Markheim."

Wilkins: "A Modern Dragon;" "A Kitchen Colonel."

The title may mention the principal object:

Adee: "The Life Magnet."Burnett: "The Spider's Eye."Hawthorne: "The Great Stone Face;" "The Great Carbuncle."James: "The Aspern Papers."Kipling: "The Phantom 'Rickshaw."Poe: "The Black Cat;" "The Gold Bug."Stevenson: "The Bottle Imp."

Adee: "The Life Magnet."

Burnett: "The Spider's Eye."

Hawthorne: "The Great Stone Face;" "The Great Carbuncle."

James: "The Aspern Papers."

Kipling: "The Phantom 'Rickshaw."

Poe: "The Black Cat;" "The Gold Bug."

Stevenson: "The Bottle Imp."

FOOTNOTES:[18]"Literary Chat."Munsey's Magazine.May, '98.[19]"Misleading Titles of Books," by William Mathews.The Saturday Evening Post.Apr. 21, 1900.

[18]"Literary Chat."Munsey's Magazine.May, '98.

[19]"Misleading Titles of Books," by William Mathews.The Saturday Evening Post.Apr. 21, 1900.

Allfiction is founded upon fact, for the boldest imagination must have some definite point from which to take its flight; but the ungarnished truth is seldom literature in itself, though it may offer excellent material for literary embellishment. The amateur, content with knowing that he is recounting what did actually happen, falls into the most inartistic ways, because he does not understand that facts are properly only crude material for the fictionist.

The one place where the average short story writer shouldnotseek his material is the world of literature. Almost from the time when men first began to dabble in letters they have drawn on their predecessors for their subject matter; but this practice has produced a deal of unconscious plagiarism, which is responsible for most of the conventional and stereotyped stories with which we are afflicted to-day. Of any one hundred average stories submitted forsale, probably seventy-five are damned by their hopelessly hackneyed conception and treatment; and they suffer because the writer, reading some attractive story built upon a similar plot, has attempted to go and do likewise, and has unconsciously used all the conventional parts while omitting the essential individuality.

It is safe for the novice to go only to the world for literary material. The matter so obtained will be intrinsically the same as that gained from the writings of others, but the fact that you get your information through your own senses will considerably obviate the danger of adopting the conventional view in the matter. I do not mean to say that you should deliberately set out to search for new types and incidents as Dickens did, though I would certainly commend such a course; I mean rather that you should be content to write of what you personally and intimately know, and not attempt to treat of matters of which you have only a vague superficial knowledge, or of which you are totally ignorant. Excellent stories have been written by men who were personally unacquainted with the matters with which they dealt, but they were in every case masters of their art, who knew how to gain and use second-hand information and how to supplement insufficient data with literary skill.

Too many novices have the mistaken idea that only those things which are dim and distant are fit for artistic treatment. They have not cultivated their powers of perception, and have failed to grasp the truth that human nature is in most respects the same the world over, and that persons and places, apparently the most ordinary, have stories to tell. Before Mary E. Wilkins began to write her New England tales few thought to look to those bleak hills and commonplace people for literary material; and doubtless many New Englanders, feeling the impulse to write, viewed with scorn their unpoetic surroundings and longed for the glamour of some half-guessed clime; Miss Wilkins, appreciating her environment, won fame and fortune through her truthful depictions of those things which others, equally able to write but less able to see, had despised.

It is a common trick of aspiring writers to locate their stories in England, to speak proudly but uncertainly of grand estates, noble castles, and haughty lords and ladies, and to make mistakes which would be ridiculous were they not so inexcusable. There is a certain half-feudal glamour about England yetwhich appeals strongly to the callow author: it lends that rosy haze of romance and unreality which is popularly associated with fiction; but it was long ago done to death by mediocre writers and laughed out of good literary society, and to-day America will not suffer any such hackneyed fol-de-rol.

Similarly the amateur will locate his story in the "best" society of some American metropolis, when he has never been out of his native village, and knows nothing of the class with which he deals except through the society column of his newspaper. Therefore he will of course "fall flat when he attempts to delineate manners. It is too evident that he has not had theentreeto the circle he would describe: his gentlemen commit too many blunders, his ladies are from the wrong side of the town, the love-passages are silly and vulgar, the whole result is stupid and offensive—to those who know. The thing hopelessly lacks tone; it might pass below stairs, but not in the drawing-room."[20]It is not only those of wealth and leisure who are eligible for literary purposes; indeed, their lives, apparently so gay and exciting, are often a dull andregular series of attempts to kill the dawdling time. If the young writer would look into the lives of his own simple neighbors he would find much better matter for his intended stories.

Again, the novice, in his search for something different, will place his tale in the dim and distant past, when all men were brave and all women lovely; and in so doing will expose himself to ridicule and contempt for his evident ignorance of the matters of which he pretends to treat. It is very probable that any age seems dull and commonplace to those who live in it, for "familiarity breeds contempt" for almost anything; but though we of to-day have no valiant knights, armed cap-a-pie, riding forth to the jousts to do battle for their ladies fair, we have men just as brave and deeds fully as valorous and far more sensible; and the world is, and always will be, full of noble and romantic and marvelous things.

If, however, you feel that you must write of times and scenes and peoples which are either past or foreign, it is your first duty to inform yourself to the best of your ability concerning them. I do not believe that any writer can successfully locate his story in a foreign country unless he has personal knowledge of the scenes and persons that he describes, orunless he is thoroughly versed in the language and literature of the country—and in the latter case he would probably be too pedantic to write readable stories. At first thought it does not seem so difficult to handle English subjects, for there we have the advantage of a common language and, to a considerable extent, of common racial traits; but even that common language, as spoken on the other side of the Atlantic, has an every-day vocabulary differing from ours, and the English government and social system present difficulties almost insurmountable to one who cannot study them face to face. In dealing with themes of the past there is more opportunity. There we are all on the common ground of an absolute dependence on such books as may preserve for us pictures of those times, and complete information—complete, at least, in the sense that no one knows more—can be had at the price of a certain number of hours of painstaking study. If, then, you desire to write of the days that are gone, see to it that you first thoroughly acquaint yourself with the history of those times. There are few towns too small to possess a library, and few libraries too small to contain such historical books as you may need.

In these days when all things come to Mohamet, the writer may gain a valuable though impersonal insight into the world at large through the medium of the public press. The newspapers of to-day are full of incipient plots, needing only the skillful pen to make them literature. Reporters go everywhere and see everything, and they place the result of their multifarious labors in your hands every morning. They recount actual happenings accurately enough for literary purposes, they strain for the unusual side of things, and their purpose is too different from yours to make you liable to the charge of plagiarism if you rework their material. The receptive perusal of any newspaper ought to furnish the reader with a fresh stock of literary material. Such matter is particularly valuable to the short story writer because of the present and ever increasing demand for stories of the day, plots, characters, situations, and local color for which may be culled from any newspaper.

But short story writing is an art, and all facts may not be capable of literary treatment. "Even actual occurrences may be improper subjects for fiction. Nature can take liberties with facts that art dare not—a truth that has passed into a proverb....Art may fill us with anger, fear, terror, awe, but the moment it condescends to excite disgust, it passes out of the realm of art."[21]"There seems no reason why the artist should not choose any subject, if the production itself contributes to the satisfaction of the world, making a picture of life, or of a phase of life, in compliance with the demands of art, beauty, and truth. Taste is the arbiter of the subject, for taste is always moral, always on the side of the angels. There are certain things which are only subjects for technical reform, for the sanitary inspector, and for the physician—not for the novelist."[22]"The carnage of a battle-field, the wrecked café or theatre after dynamite has done its work, had best be handled sparingly.... A good many things that happen on this planet are not good subjects for art: the pathetic (within limits) is always in order, but not the shocking. Moral are worse than physical horrors."[23]"Even genius may waste itself on an unmanageable theme; it cannot makethe cleaning of fish interesting, nor the slums of New York or Paris attractive."[24]

It is rare indeed that a fact can be used without embellishment. Mere facts are frequently most unliterary, though they may be susceptible of a high literary polish. The sub-title "A True Story," which young writers think so valuable a part of the tale, is too often the trademark of an unreadable mess of conventional people, ordinary incidents and commonplace conversation. We find few genuinely true stories, and when we do find them we seldom care to read them through. I have read many stories which I knew to be literally true, because they contained so much of the hackneyed and the irrelevant. Life itself is a very conventional affair; it abounds with dull events and stupid people; and for that reason alone fiction would demand something out of the common. Commonplace persons and commonplace things do appear in literature, but they must have something more than their commonplaceness to recommend them.

"The novice in story telling ... has heard that truth is stranger than fiction, and supposes thatthe more truth he can get into his tale the stronger and more effective it will be.... Truth,i. e., reality, is very seldom strange; it is usually tame and flat and commonplace; and when it is strange it is apt to be grotesque and repulsive. Most of the experiences of daily life afford material only for a chronicle of dulness; and most of the 'strange' or unusual happenings had better be left to the newspaper and the records of the police courts. This statement may be strengthened. Does not the able reporter select and decorate his facts, suppressing some, emphasizing others, arranging his 'story' with reference to picturesqueness and effect?

"In other words, verisimilitude, not verity, is wanted in fiction. The observer notes his facts, and then the artist seizes on the ideas behind them, the types they represent, the spiritual substances they embody. The result, when all goes well, is as lifelike as life itself, though it is not a copy of anything (in detail) that really lives.... The budding writer of fictitious tales must be familiar with facts, at least in his own range: he must know life and nature, or his work is naught. But when he has this knowledge, he must put the facts in the background of his mind.... Real incidents, draggedagainst their will into an (alleged) imaginary narrative, are apt by no means to improve it, but to sound as 'flat and untunable' as our own praises from our own mouths."[25]

"There must be no misconception about great fiction being a transcript of life. Mere transcription is not the work of an artist, else we should have no need of painters, for photographers would do; no poems, for academical essays would do; no great works of fiction, for we have our usual sources of information—if information is all we want—the Divorce Court, the Police Court, the Stock Exchange, the Young Ladies' Seminary, the Marriage Register, and the House of Parliament—those happy hunting-grounds of sensation-mongers and purveyors of melodrama. All these things certainly contain the facts of life which one must know for the constructive work of the imagination, for they are the rough material, the background of knowledge from which the illusion of real life must proceed. But they are not life, though they are the transcription of life. The human significance of facts is all that concerns one. The inwardness of facts makesfiction; the history of life, its emotions, its passions, its sins, reflections, values. These you cannot photograph nor transcribe. Selection and rejection are two profound essentials of every art, even of the art of fiction, though it be so jauntily practised by the amateur."[26]

And even if the facts which you purpose to use are of undoubted value for artistic treatment, there may be other reasons which make their use questionable. In the first place, people do not really prefer truth to fiction. They require plausibility, but they are all too familiar with life themselves, and in the idle hours in which they turn to fiction they desire to be lifted out of reality into the higher realm of fancy. Nor will they, even in the form of fiction, tolerate what seems like too gross an invasion of the privacy of the home, or the sanctity of the soul of a man. They must always feel vaguely that the suffering characters are really only puppets created for their amusement, or their pity for the characters will develop into anger and disgust for the author.

In using facts, then, the first thing to learn is what to suppress and what to elaborate, and thatinvolves that most necessary possession of the story teller, a sense of proportion. Because a conversation about the weather occupies two dull people for ten minutes is no reason that it should receive an equal number of pages; and because an important event is almost instantaneous is no excuse for passing it with a single line. Again, the fact that you are relating what actually occurred does not relieve you of the necessity of making it plausible. Painters acknowledge that there are color combinations in nature which they dare not reproduce, lest they be dubbed unnatural; and similarly things exist which the writer may present only after he has most carefully prepared the way for their credence. The truth is that we have declared that even nature shall conform to certain conventions, and we reject as impossible any deviations from our preconceived ideas.

The facts upon which Hawthorne built "The Ambitious Guest" are these:—The White Hills of which he speaks (¶ 1) are the famous White Mountains of New Hampshire; the Notch (¶ 1) is the real name of a real mountain pass, which is just as he describes it; the Flume (¶ 22) is a waterfall not far from the Notch; the valley of the Saco (¶ 1) is really where he places it. The references to Portland(¶ 3), Bartlett (¶ 5), Burlington (¶ 7), Bethlehem and Littleton (¶ 18) are all references to real places in the vicinity. At the point where Hawthorne locates his story there actually was a mountain tavern called the Willey House, and a modern inn stands on the spot to-day. Concerning the catastrophe which he describes I found the following account:

"Some time in June—before the great 'slide' in August, 1826—there came a great storm, and the old veteran, Abel Crawford, coming down the Notch, noticed the trees slipping down, standing upright, and, as he was passing Mr. Willey's he called and informed him of the wonderful fact. Immediately, in a less exposed place, Mr. Willey prepared a shelter to which to flee in case of immediate danger; and in the night of August 28th, that year, he was, with his family, awakened by the thundering crash of the coming avalanche. Attempting to escape, that family, nine in number, rushed from the house and were overtaken and buried alive under a vast pile of rocks, earth, trees and water. By a remarkable circumstance the house remained uninjured, as the slide divided about four rods back of the house (against a high flat rock), and came down on either side with overwhelming power."[27]

The book goes on to state further that the familyconsisted of the father and mother, five children—the eldest a girl of thirteen—and two hired men. The bodies of the parents, the oldest and youngest children, and the two hired men were found.

It is probable that Hawthorne derived his information from the newspapers, though he may have heard the story by word of mouth, for there is little doubt that he actually visited the spot where the catastrophe occurred. But the bald facts of the case, however gained, are essentially as we have them here, and that is sufficient for our purpose.

In writing his story Hawthorne took several liberties with the facts. He made no change in the location because even he could not improve upon the scene for such a story. He changed the month from August to September (¶ 1) to make plausible, perhaps, the rain necessary for such a slide, and to make seasonable the bitter wind which he introduces. He omitted all names to add to the air of unsolved mystery that haunts the story. He introduced the guest (¶ 4) and the grandmother (¶ 1), increased the age of the daughter (¶ 1), retained the parents and younger children (¶ 1) and omitted the hired men to suit the requirements of his story. He omitted the warning but retained the establishmentof a place of refuge (¶ 9) to heighten the climax. He used the flight from the house (¶ 42) because it just suited his purpose. He retained the strange preservation of the house (¶ 42) to increase the air of mystery, and to intensify the tragedy by making it appear in a manner unnecessary. He suppressed the finding of any of the bodies (¶ 42) to aid the plausibility of his narrative, and to increase the pathos of the guest's death.

Compare carefully the account given by Spaulding and the story of Hawthorne, for you have here an excellent illustration of the difference between the commonplace recital of facts and their transformation into a work of art. Spaulding's relation is a true story, but Hawthorne's is literature.

FOOTNOTES:[20]"Bad Story-Telling," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's.Oct., '97.[21]"Rudimentary Suggestions for Beginners in Story Writing," by E. F. Andrews.Cosmopolitan.Feb., '97.[22]"The Art of Fiction." A lecture by Gilbert Parker.The Critic.Dec., '98.[23]"Magazine Fiction and How Not to Write It," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's.Nov., '94.[24]"Bad Story-Telling," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's, Oct., '97.[25]"Fact in Fiction," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's, July, '95.[26]"The Art of Fiction." A lecture by Gilbert Parker.The Critic.Dec., '98.[27]"Historical Relics of the White Mountains," by John H. Spaulding. (Boston, 1855.) "Destruction of the Willey Family," page 58.

[20]"Bad Story-Telling," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's.Oct., '97.

[21]"Rudimentary Suggestions for Beginners in Story Writing," by E. F. Andrews.Cosmopolitan.Feb., '97.

[22]"The Art of Fiction." A lecture by Gilbert Parker.The Critic.Dec., '98.

[23]"Magazine Fiction and How Not to Write It," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's.Nov., '94.

[24]"Bad Story-Telling," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's, Oct., '97.

[25]"Fact in Fiction," by Frederick M. Bird.Lippincott's, July, '95.

[26]"The Art of Fiction." A lecture by Gilbert Parker.The Critic.Dec., '98.

[27]"Historical Relics of the White Mountains," by John H. Spaulding. (Boston, 1855.) "Destruction of the Willey Family," page 58.

Itis the tritest sort of a truism to say that the characters in a story are important, for stories are stories only in so far as they reflect life, and life is impossible without human actors. It is the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the sins and moral victories of men that interest us. We men are a conceited lot, and find nothing of interest except as it relates to us. Thus in the most ingenious stories, where some marvelous invention or discovery is introduced, the interest centers, not in the wondrous things themselves, but in their influence on the people of the story; and in the few stories where a beast or a thing plays the hero, it is always given human attributes.

Fictitious characters, like the plots that they develop, are based primarily on fact, and they further resemble the plots in being different phases of a primal idea, rather than intrinsically diverse. We find many characters in fiction—Miss Wilkins' storiesare full of them—which are evidently meant to be realistic, and which impress us as word photographs of existing persons; yet it is improbable that they are exact reproductions. A real person ordinarily has too much of the commonplace and conventional about him to serve in fiction, where—despite the apparent paradox—a character must be exaggerated to appear natural. A person in fiction is at the best but a blur of hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper, and can be comprehended only through the mentality of the author; therefore his description, his actions, his words, his very thoughts must be made so unnaturally striking that through the sense of sight alone they will stimulate the imagination and produce the effect which actual contact with the real person would induce. The character which seems most real is usually a composite of the most striking characteristics of several real persons. To this source of fictitious characters is due the fact that a literary puppet is often thought to be the reproduction of several very different real persons; for the reader, recognizing a particular trait which is characteristic of some one of his acquaintance, thinks that he recognizes the character.

"While the popular idea that every creature ofthe novelist's imagination has a definite original somewhere among his acquaintances is, of course, egregiously false, it has yet this much of truth, that they are, to a large extent, suggestions from life. Not one person, but half a dozen, often sit as models for the same picture, while the details are filled out by the writer's imagination. There are few people in real life sufficiently interesting or uncommonplace to suit the novelist's purpose, but he must idealize or intensify them before they are fit subjects for art. Dickens intensified to the verge of the impossible, yet we never feel that Dick Swiveller and Sam Weller and Mr. Micawber, and the rest of them, are unnatural; they are only, if I may coin the word, 'hypernatural.' It is the business of art to idealize. Even at its best art is so inferior to nature, that in order to produce the same impression it has to intensify its effects; to deepen the colors, heighten the contrasts, omit an object here, exaggerate an outline there, and so on, until it has produced the proper picturesque effect."[28]

A careful description of the appearance of the characters may be necessary to the understandingof the story, as in Irving's perfect picture of Ichabod Crane in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"; but in our model the people are rather typical than individual, and Hawthorne devotes but little space to their external characteristics. A word or a phrase suffices to tell us all that is necessary to enable our minds to body them forth. Even the hero is outwardly distinguished only by a melancholy expression—a slight of which no school-girl "authoress" would have been guilty. It is more often necessary to give the mental characteristics of the puppets, and in "The Ambitious Guest" we have a deal of such detail concerning the young stranger; but here, too, you must exercise forbearance, as Hawthorne did in his partial analysis of the other characters.

It is by no means essential that the personages of a short story be attractive in person or in character. The taste of readers used to be so artificial that no romancer would have dared to present a heroine who was not perfect in face and figure, or a hero who was not an Apollo for manly beauty; but in these more practical days we have substituted good deeds for good looks and have made our characters more human—our men more manly and our women morewomanly; and we exalt them now for heroic acts, rather than heroic mould.

A mistake which it seems hard for the novice to avoid is that of telling everything possible about a character and leaving nothing to the imagination of the reader. This exhaustive method leads to a multiplicity of detail which verges on baldness, and which is very apt to contain considerable irrelevant matter; the details are usually arranged with little regard for their true value; and the intended description becomes a mere catalogue of personal charms. For example, in these three descriptions, detailed though they are, there is nothing to distinguish the particular person described from the scores of other people possessing the same general traits:

He was a tall, deep-chested, broad-shouldered man, having a light complexion, dark moustache, hair and eyes.We will take a look at our heroine, as she sits lazily rocking, the sunshine touching her hair. She is of medium height, with black hair and eyes and a winning smile that makes friends for her everywhere.Lura was yet but a slight school girl; she was now fifteen and equally as large as Grace. She looked very beautiful as she came out to meet Grace and Mrs. Morton, on their return from the village. Her dark brown hairhad been carefully combed back, but the short locks had fallen and formed in ringlets about the snowy neck and face. Her large gray eyes were bright. Her full curved lips were red, and in laughing and talking revealed two rows of small, even, pearly white teeth. Her cheeks were round and well formed; although at the present time they bore no marks of roses, they were generally rosy. The gray eyes, by the changing of the expression, often became almost black and greatly completed her beauty.

He was a tall, deep-chested, broad-shouldered man, having a light complexion, dark moustache, hair and eyes.

We will take a look at our heroine, as she sits lazily rocking, the sunshine touching her hair. She is of medium height, with black hair and eyes and a winning smile that makes friends for her everywhere.

Lura was yet but a slight school girl; she was now fifteen and equally as large as Grace. She looked very beautiful as she came out to meet Grace and Mrs. Morton, on their return from the village. Her dark brown hairhad been carefully combed back, but the short locks had fallen and formed in ringlets about the snowy neck and face. Her large gray eyes were bright. Her full curved lips were red, and in laughing and talking revealed two rows of small, even, pearly white teeth. Her cheeks were round and well formed; although at the present time they bore no marks of roses, they were generally rosy. The gray eyes, by the changing of the expression, often became almost black and greatly completed her beauty.

Clever character depiction consists in selecting and presenting only those salient details which will serve to body forth rather a vague image, which shall yet possess a definite personality, to which the reader may give such distinctness as his imagination may impart to the hints offered. It is in a manner building a complete character upon a single characteristic, after the familiar method of Dickens. It is this impressionistic method which is most used by masters to picture those characters which seem to us real persons.

In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving thus describes the hero (?), Ichabod Crane, and the heroine, Katrina Van Tassel:

The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrowshoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at the top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge, ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and foreign fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam, the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge, ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and foreign fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam, the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

Here are Hawthorne's pictures of Beatrice and her father in "Rappaccini's Daughter":

On again beholding Beatrice the young man was even startled to perceive how much her beauty exceeded his recollection of it—so brilliant, so vivid in its character, that she glowed amid the sunlight, and, as Giovanni whispered to himself, positively illuminated the more shadowy intervals of the garden path. Her face being now more revealed than on the former occasion, he was struck by its expression of simplicity and sweetness—qualities that had not entered into his idea of her character, and which made him ask anew what manner of mortal she might be. Nor did he fail again to observe or imagine an analogy between the beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gem-like flowers over the fountain—a resemblance which Beatrice seemed to have indulged a fantastic humor in heightening both by the arrangement of her dress and the selection of its hues.His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow and sickly-looking man dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, and a thin gray beard and a face singularly marked with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.

His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow and sickly-looking man dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, and a thin gray beard and a face singularly marked with intellect and cultivation, but which could never, even in his more youthful days, have expressed much warmth of heart.

And this is the way Dickens sets forth Scrooge, the old miser, in "A Christmas Carol":

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitaryas an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

There is very little of the catalogue style of description here; indeed, the characters can hardly be said to be described: the author gives rather the sensations which they produced on observers and so excites similar sensations in the mind of the reader.

When once introduced the characters should be allowed to work out their identities with the least possible interference from the author. Their characteristics must not be listed like invoices of goods: they must themselves display the psychological powers with which they were endowed by their creator. Their speeches and actions must seem the results of mental processes, and must appear natural, if not logical; indeed, it is an open question if they can be both at once, for there are few people who are always logical. One good method of presenting the characteristics of a fictitious personage is to indulge in a bit of mind reading, and give his thoughts as hethinks them; another and better way is to show the man actuated by his dominant mental qualities. In "The Cask of Amontillado" Poe builds a whole story on an elaboration of the latter method, and presents the picture of a man temporarily mastered by the spirit of revenge. It is only by thus allowing the characters to work out their own destinies that you can make them real; otherwise they will appear as mere painted puppets, without life or volition.

On account of the technical limitations of the short story the number of characters which may have principal or "speaking" parts is very small—in general only two, and frequently but one. There are usually other characters present to help out the action, but they are merely supernumeraries, without form, life or influence. There are many violations of this rule, I admit, among them such stories as Hawthorne's "The Great Stone Face," "The Seven Vagabonds," and "The Great Carbuncle;" but analysis shows them to be panoramic or episodic in effect, and really violating the unity of action which the short story demands. For similar reasons the characters presented must be unnaturally isolated, with little past and less future, and most strangely lacking in relatives; for the fewthousand words of the short story permit but a cursory treatment of the ancestry, birth, breeding and family of the one or two important characters. If by any trick they can be made the last of a long line, and be snatched from obscurity into the momentary glare of the lime light, so much the better for author, reader and character; but if some portion of their history bears upon the story, let it be presented by subtle touches, preferably by references in the dialogue, so that the reader obtains the necessary knowledge without being conscious of the means.

The few real characters in the story must be made unusually interesting on account of their loneliness. They compose the story, they represent the human race, and if they fail us we are in sad straits. They must be individual; they must stand out sharply from the page, clear and attractive, and leave no doubt of their personalities. More than any other form of fiction, the short story depends upon its hero and heroine, who have "star parts" and monopolize the stage of action. We must see them so vividly that when they speak and act we shall perceive them as actual personages. It is such accuracy of depiction that makes Rip Van Winkle, Sherlock Holmes, VanBibber, and a host of others enter into our thoughts and speech as if they had really lived.

The names with which we label these dolls may be of importance. In these days names have little significance, yet we still feel that a name from its very sound may be appropriate or otherwise, and no careful writer would give to his characters appellations selected at random. Names are frequently used to good advantage as aids to character depiction or to enhance humorous effects, as in the case of Hawthorne's Feathertop and Monsieur du Miroir, and Irving's Ichabod Crane, and in many other instances familiar to readers of Dickens.

"Dickens's names are marvelously apt, as we see from the passing into common phrase of so many of them. Not a few have become synonyms for the kind of character to which they were attached.... If a name is to hint at character it should do so in the subtlest manner possible—in a manner so subtle as to escape all but the quickwitted, who will forgive the inartistic method in their pride at being so clever as to detect the writer's intention.... In these days, when craftsmanship is cared for and looked for more than ever, ... novelists must sacrificenothing that will lend a trick of reality to their imaginings. If they take any pains to select names for their characters they should hit upon such as will be seen to suit them when their books have been read (like Sir Willoughby Patterne or Gabriel Oak); names that attempt with clumsy impertinence to give a clew to character at the outset are best left to the inept amateur of letters who has not wit enough to dispense with such aid.

"To be avoided, also, are out-of-the-way names that may have living owners in the real world. No John Smith or Tom Jones can complain if writers christen their characters after them; but if a man owns a peculiar name he dislikes having it borrowed and attached to some figure in fiction whose proceedings very likely do it little credit.... Every writer must know the satisfaction that comes when an 'exquisitely right' name is hit upon. But it is just as well to take reasonable precautions to avoid indignant protests such as that which Hawthorne drew upon himself"[29]for his use of the name Judge Pyncheon in "The House of the Seven Gables."

The dramatic trend of the short story is responsible for its tendency to advance action by speech. Good short stories have been written and will be written which contain little or no dialogue; they succeed through vividness of plot, skill in character depiction, ingenuity of construction, or some such quality; but they would be more interesting and more natural if they held more conversation. A short story should be full of talk of the proper kind; there are few people who preserve silence at all times, and in the exciting moments which a short story usually presents, most persons would find tongue to voice their teeming thoughts. Speech adds naturalness and vividness to the actors, it lends them a personal interest, it gives insight into character, and it aids the development of the plot.

This is a modern tendency, for the stories of Kipling, Stevenson, Wilkins, Davis and Doyle contain much more of the conversational element than those of Poe, Hawthorne or Irving. Where the latter would present a mental struggle or a crisis by some paragraphs of description, the former express it in the short exciting words of the actors themselves; even soliloquies and asides and other of the most mechanical devices of the drama are forced into the service of the short story, to replace the long explanatory passages such as were used by Irving. It has been predicted that in the short story of the future the characters will be briefly introduced and then will be allowed to speak for themselves; if this prophecy comes true we shall have stories similar to Hope's "The Dolly Dialogues," or Howells' little dramas, where there is almost no comment by the author. It is more probable, though, that there is something of a "fad" in the present liking for pure dialogue, and that the short story will never attain the absolute purity of the drama.

If these fictitious personages are to talk, however, they must talk naturally and interestingly—and "there's the rub!" As in real life a man often shows himself to be a fool when he begins to talk, so in fiction a character frequently proves to be but a poor puppet of straw when he opens his mouth. The only way to make your characters talk naturally is to imitate the speech of the persons whom they in some degree represent. People in general do not talk by book: they use colloquial language, full of poor grammar, slang, and syncopated words; and their sentences are neither always logical nor complete. In reproducing this, however, you must "edit" it a little, using your own judgment as towhich are the characteristic idioms; for the speech of the people in books is admittedly a little better than in real life—except in dialect stories, where it is usually worse; and you must avoid equally the heavy rhetorical style of the extreme romantic school, and the inane commonplaces of the radical realists.

Conversation like the following is commonly termed "bookish"; it is painfully correct and laboriously profound—but it is not natural. If it were meant for a burlesque upon polite and "cultured" society it would be exquisite, but it is the manner in which the writer believes people really talk, though it is easy to guess that he himself is far from such absurd affectations in his familiar speech.

"By way of preliminary, I have to say that my name is Athlee—Felix Athlee, and yours is Miss India Lemare. I've seen you before.""In the flesh, I hope," she answered."Yes, I like you better that way, though you now wear the expression of one older in years and experience. Wherefore, may I ask?""Shadows fall on the young as well as the old. One is fortunate, indeed, to keep always in the sunshine.""And flit like the butterfly, without volition or effort? Human appointments are different. Work is theinevitable, and with the proper tools, it is pleasant enough.""They must, long ago, have rusted, for the want of use.""No, we have simply to consider our specialty and we find them ready at hand. Have you done so?""I am dazed, and my brain works capriciously.""Except in the interest of your desires. What are they?""Wealth for independence, leisure for indulgence, and fame, the outcome of talent."His luminous eyes looked out over the water, as he said: "The universal hunt of mankind is for happiness, and he searches for it in as many ways as there are peculiarities of disposition. Does he ever really find it? Many weary hearts are covered with the soft down of wealth. Mischief lurks in indulgence, and fame dazzles but to elude. It is wiser to accept what the gods give, and use the gifts for the betterment of others as well as ourselves.""Meaningless words, when one is at enmity with the gods for withholding. What fine spun theories we mortals have!"

"By way of preliminary, I have to say that my name is Athlee—Felix Athlee, and yours is Miss India Lemare. I've seen you before."

"In the flesh, I hope," she answered.

"Yes, I like you better that way, though you now wear the expression of one older in years and experience. Wherefore, may I ask?"

"Shadows fall on the young as well as the old. One is fortunate, indeed, to keep always in the sunshine."

"And flit like the butterfly, without volition or effort? Human appointments are different. Work is theinevitable, and with the proper tools, it is pleasant enough."

"They must, long ago, have rusted, for the want of use."

"No, we have simply to consider our specialty and we find them ready at hand. Have you done so?"

"I am dazed, and my brain works capriciously."

"Except in the interest of your desires. What are they?"

"Wealth for independence, leisure for indulgence, and fame, the outcome of talent."

His luminous eyes looked out over the water, as he said: "The universal hunt of mankind is for happiness, and he searches for it in as many ways as there are peculiarities of disposition. Does he ever really find it? Many weary hearts are covered with the soft down of wealth. Mischief lurks in indulgence, and fame dazzles but to elude. It is wiser to accept what the gods give, and use the gifts for the betterment of others as well as ourselves."

"Meaningless words, when one is at enmity with the gods for withholding. What fine spun theories we mortals have!"

To the listener every conversation contains a deal of commonplace: it may be that the speakers really have nothing interesting to say, and it may be that their conversation is so personal as to interest themselves only. The reader occupies the position of a listener, and it is the duty of the author to suppressall commonplace dialogue, unless, as sometimes happens, it assists in plot or character development. Conversation like the following is—let us hope—interesting to the parties concerned, but the reader would be delivered from it as from a plague.

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