Chapter IV: The Entertaining Group (1)

In the group "entertaining" we may class all those narratives that are told simply for the purpose of pleasing the reader and passing away his time for him--tales of probable adventure, society stories, humorous stories, and stories for special occasions, like Thanksgiving and Christmas. The bulk of magazine fiction is of this kind. The chief endeavor of the writer is to create the illusions of probability for a series of events that after all is imaginary. However numerous may be the actual incidents embodied, the course of the happening as a whole is nevertheless made-up. There is always a heightening or lowering of natural color, a modification of real occurrences, in order to produce the desired effect; namely, acceptance by the reader of the whole series, and especially the climax, which may be, for instance, the capture of the wild animal, the culmination of the love episode, the emphasis of the funny point, or the accident at the special celebration.

I. The Tale of Probable Adventure

Adventure narratives are essentially boys' stories--the grammar and high school boys who are past the "foolishness" of fairy tales and even of Oriental wonder stories, but are not yet appreciative of realism, the quiet reflection of humdrum life. For many decades _The Youth's Companion_ has furnished among its other good things excellent stories of adventure probable and actual. Stevenson's masterpiece is, of course, one of the two top-notches of excellence in the extended form of this type of story. How the species may be historically but a modification of the _voyages imaginaires_ is obviously suggested no less by "Treasure Island" than by "Robinson Crusoe." It is the short form of this type that we are dealing with at present.

[Definition]

Stories of probable adventure are narratives of exciting and extraordinary events that, though really fictitious, might have happened. We can tell many of them from true adventures only by the testimony of the authors. "Captain Singleton's Tour Across Africa," critics have said, seems to the general reader quite as true an account as Stanley's; while the "Memoirs of a Cavalier," which records the adventures of a soldier in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, was long mistaken for autobiography.

[The writing of a probable adventure]

To write a tale of this kind you must put yourself into the mood of the bold hunter or traveller. You must imagine exciting things. Many of your own experiences have just missed being astounding. Add what-might-have-been, and you have a story of the type we are discussing. You catch the bear or the bear catches you. You swim across a turbulent river. You spend the night on an iceberg. You coast down the frightful curves of the twenty-five miles of the Benguet road with the steering gear of your automobile entirely useless. Remember, though, that the adventure must seem real, however much you have drawn on your reading and imagination. You must know enough of animal, plant, and human life, and of geography, to be particular here and there and thus give verisimilitude to your pictures. In order to get a subject, suppose you think of what you consider the bravest physical act; then build up around it a swift, crisp narrative. You may use technical terms once in a while, such as a nervous story-teller would be likely to fling off and then explain; only be sure they are intelligible very soon.

An ordinary imagination supplemented by a "Baedeker" will enable any one to construct an acceptable probable adventure. Superior excellence will lie in the diction and style.

[A warning]

Because of the prevalence of this kind of narrative, you will need to guard yourself with especial care against the temptation to plagiarize. Be sure that your certification of authorship really tells the truth. It is easier to be original than you think; as George Bernard Shaw says, any man with brains can more easily compose a story or a play than steal one.

=A Fight with a Bear=

One day, being in a forest a few leagues from Dusseldorf, as Gerard was walking like one in a dream, thinking of Margaret and scarce seeing the road he trod, his companion laid a hand on his shoulder, and strung his cross-bow with glittering eye. "Hush!" said he, in a low whisper that startled Gerard more than thunder. Gerard grasped his axe tight, and shook a little; he heard a rustling in the wood hard by, and at the same moment Denys sprang into the wood, and his crossbow went to his shoulder, even as he jumped. =Twang!= went the metal string; and after an instant's suspense he roared, "Run forward, guard the road! he is hit! he is hit!"

Gerard darted forward, and, as he ran, a young bear burst out of the wood right upon him; finding itself intercepted, it went upon its hind legs with a snarl, and, though not half-grown, opened formidable jaws and long claws. Gerard, in a fury of excitement and agitation, flung himself on it, and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe, and the creature staggered; another, and it lay groveling, with Gerard hacking it.

"Hallo, stop! You are mad to spoil the meat."

"I took it for a robber," said Gerard, panting. "I mean I had made ready for a robber, so I could not hold my hand."

"Ay, these chattering travelers have stuffed your head full of thieves and assassins; they have not got a real live robber in their whole nation. Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear you, though, my cross-bow."

"We will carry it by turns, then," said Gerard, "for 'tis a heavy load; poor thing, how its blood drips. Why did we slay it?"

"For supper and the reward the baillie of the next town shall give us."

"And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live; and perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves it as ours love us; more than mine does me."

"What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month, and her skin is now at the tanner's? and his father was stuck full of clothyard shafts t'other day, and died like Julius Cæsar, with his hands folded on his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?"

But Gerard would not view it jestingly. "Why, then," said he, "we have killed one of God's creatures that was all alone in the world--as I am this day, in this strange land."

"You young milksop," roared Denys, "these things must not be looked at so, or not another bow would be drawn nor quarrel fly in the forest nor battlefield. Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pike-men should turn them to a row of milk pails; it is ended; to Rome thou goest not alone; for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin. I take thee to Remiremont, my native place, and there I marry thee to my young sister. She is blooming as a peach. Thou shakest thy head? Ah! I forgot; thou lovest elsewhere, and art a one-woman man, a creature to me scarce conceivable. Well, then, I shall find thee, not a wife, nor a leman, but a friend; some honest Burgundian who shall go with thee as far as Lyons; and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor thou hast dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I endured not doves in doublet and hose. From Lyons, I say, I can trust thee by ship to Italy, which being by all accounts the very stronghold of milksops, thou wilt there be safe; they will hear thy words, and make thee their duke in a twinkling."

Gerard sighed. "In sooth I love not to think of this Dusseldorf, where we are to part company, good friend."

They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the thought checked trifling conversation, and at these moments it is a relief to do something, however insignificant. Gerard asked Denys to lend him a bolt. "I have often shot with a long-bow, but never with one of these."

"Draw thy knife and cut this one out of the cub," said Denys slyly.

"Nay, nay, I want a clean one."

Denys gave him three out of his quiver.

Gerard strung the bow and leveled it at a bough that had fallen into the road at some distance. The power of the instrument surprised him; the short but thick steel bow jarred him to the very heel as it went off, and the swift steel shaft was invisible in its passage. Only the dead leaves, with which November had carpeted the narrow road, flew about on the other side of the bough.

"Ye aimed a thought too high," said Denys.

"What a deadly thing! No wonder it is driving out the long-bow--to Martin's much discontent."

"Ay, lad," said Denys, triumphantly, "it gains ground every day, in spite of their laws and their proclamations to keep up the yewen bow, because, forsooth, their grandsires shot with it, knowing no better. You see, Gerard, war is not pastime. Men will shoot at their enemies with the hittingest arm and the killingest, not with the longest and missingest."

"Then these new engines I hear of will put both bows down; for these, with a pinch of black dust and a leaden ball, and a child's finger, shall slay you Mars and Goliath and the Seven Champions."

"Pooh! pooh!" said Denys, warmly; "petrone nor harquebuss shall ever put down Sir Arbalest. Why, we can shoot ten times while they are putting their charcoal and their lead into their leathern smoke belchers, and then kindling their matches. All that is too fumbling for the field of battle; there a soldier's weapon needs be aye ready, like his heart."

Gerard did not answer, for his ear was attracted by a sound behind them. It was a peculiar sound, too, like something heavy, but not hard, rushing softly over the dead leaves. He turned round with some little curiosity. A colossal creature was coming down the road at about sixty paces distance.

He looked at it in a sort of calm stupor at first; but the next moment he turned ashy pale.

"Denys!" he cried. "O God! Denys!"

Denys whirled round.

It was a bear as big as a cart horse.

It was tearing along with its huge head down, running on a hot scent.

The very moment he saw it, Denys said in a sickening whisper:

"The cub!"

Oh! the concentrated horror of that one word, whispered hoarsely, with dilating eyes! For in that syllable it all flashed upon them both like a sudden stroke of lightning in the dark--the bloody trail, the murdered cub, the mother upon them, and it. DEATH.

All this in a moment of time. The next she saw them. Huge as she was, she seemed to double herself (it was her long hair bristling with rage); she raised her head big as a bull's, her swine-shaped jaws opened wide at them, her eyes turned to blood and flame, and she rushed upon them, scattering the leaves about her like a whirlwind as she came.

"Shoot!" screamed Denys, but Gerard stood shaking from head to foot, useless.

"Shoot, man! ten thousand devils, shoot! Too late! Tree! tree!" and he dropped the cub, pushed Gerard across the road, and flew to the first tree and climbed it, Gerard the same on his side; and, as they fled, both men uttered inhuman howls like savage creatures grazed by death.

With all their speed one or other would have been torn to fragments at the foot of his tree; but the bear stopped a moment at the cub.

Without taking her bloodshot eyes off those she was hunting, she smelt it all round, and found, how, her Creator only knows, that it was dead, quite dead. She gave a yell such as neither of the hunted ones had ever heard, nor dreamed to be in nature, and flew after Denys. She reared and struck at him as he climbed. He was just out of reach.

Instantly she seized the tree, and with her huge teeth tore a great piece out of it with a crash. Then she reared again, dug her claws deep into the bark and began to mount it slowly, but as surely as a monkey.

Denys's evil star had led him to a dead tree, a mere shaft, and of no very great height. He climbed faster than his pursuer, and was soon at the top. He looked this way and that for some bough of another tree to spring to. There was none; and if he jumped down he knew the bear would be upon him ere he could recover the fall, and make short work of him. Moreover, Denys was little used to turning his back on danger, and his blood was rising at being hunted. He turned to bay.

"My hour is come," thought he. "Let me meet death like a man." He kneeled down and grasped a small shoot to steady himself, drew his long knife, and clenching his teeth, prepared to job the huge brute as soon as it should mount within reach.

Of this combat the result was not doubtful.

The monster's head and neck were scarce vulnerable for bone and masses of hair. The man was going to sting the bear, and the bear to crack the man like a nut.

Gerard's heart was better than his nerves. He saw his friend's mortal danger, and passed at once from fear to blindish rage. He slipped down his tree in a moment, caught up the cross-bow which he had dropped in the road, and, running furiously up, sent a bolt into the bear's body with a loud shout. The bear gave a snarl of rage and pain and turned its head irresolutely.

"Keep aloof," cried Denys, "or you are a dead man."

"I care not," and in a moment he had another bolt ready and shot it fiercely into the bear, screaming "Take that! that! that!"

Denys poured a volley of oaths down at him. "Get away, idiot!"

He was right; the bear finding so formidable and noisy a foe behind him, slipped growling down the tree, rending deep furrows in it as she slipped. Gerard ran back to his tree and climbed it swiftly. But while his legs were dangling some eight feet from the ground the bear came rearing and struck with her forepaw, and out flew a piece of bloody cloth from Gerard's hose. He climbed and climbed, and presently he heard as it were in the air a voice say, "Go out on the bough!" He looked, and there was a long massive branch before him shooting upwards at a slight angle; he threw his body across it, and by a series of convulsive efforts worked up it to the end.

Then he looked round panting.

The bear was mounting the tree on the other side. He heard her claws scrape; and saw her bulge on both sides of the massive tree. Her eye not being very quick, she reached the fork and passed it, mounting the main stem. Gerard drew breath more freely. The bear either heard him or found by scent she was wrong; she paused; presently she caught sight of him. She eyed him steadily, then quietly descended to the fork.

Slowly and cautiously she stretched out a paw and tried the bough. It was a stiff oak branch, sound as iron. Instinct taught the creature this; it crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as it came.

Gerard looked wildly down. He was forty feet from the ground. Death below. Death moving slow but sure on him in a still more horrible form. His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless, fascinated, tongue-tied.

As the fearful monster crawled growling towards him, incongruous thoughts coursed through his mind. Margaret, the Vulgate, where it speaks of the rage of a she-bear robbed of her whelps--Rome--Eternity.

The bear crawled on. And now the stupor of death fell on the doomed man; he saw the open jaws and bloodshot eyes coming, but in a mist.

As in a mist he heard a twang; he glanced down; Denys, white and silent as death, was shooting up at the bear. The bear snarled at the twang; but crawled on. Again the cross-bow twanged; and the bear snarled and came nearer. Again the cross-bow twanged, and the next moment the bear was close upon Gerard, where he sat, with hair standing stiff on end, and eyes starting from their sockets, palsied. The bear opened her jaws like a grave, and hot blood spouted from them upon Gerard as from a pump. The bough rocked. The wounded monster was reeling; it clung, it stuck its sickles of claws deep into the wood; it toppled, its claws held firm, but its body rolled off, and the sudden shock to the branch shook Gerard forward on his stomach with his face upon one of the bear's straining paws. At this, by a convulsive effort, she raised her head up, up, till he felt her hot fetid breath. Then huge teeth snapped together loudly close below him in the air, with a last effort of baffled hate. The ponderous carcass rent the claws out of the boughs; then pounded the earth with a tremendous thump. There was a shout of triumph below, and the very next instant a cry of dismay, for Gerard had swooned, and, without an attempt to save himself, rolled headlong from the perilous height.

Denys caught at Gerard and somewhat checked his fall; but it may be doubted whether this alone would have saved him from breaking his neck or a limb. His best friend now was the dying bear, on whose hairy carcass his head and shoulders descended. Denys tore him off her. It was needless. She panted still, and her limbs quivered, but a hare was not so harmless; and soon she breathed her last, and the judicious Denys propped Gerard up against her, being soft, and fanned him. He came to by degrees, but confused, and feeling the bear all round him, rolled away, yelling.

"Courage," cried Denys, "_le diable est mort_."

"Is it dead, quite dead?" inquired Gerard from behind a tree; for his courage was feverish, and the cold fit was on him just now, and had been for some time.

"Behold," said Denys, and pulled the brute's ear playfully, and opened her jaws and put in his head, with other insulting antics; in the midst of which Gerard was violently sick.

Denys laughed at him.

"What is the matter now?" said he; "also, why tumble off your perch just when we had won the day?"

"I swooned, I trow."

"But why?"

Not receiving an answer, he continued, "Green girls faint as soon as look at you, but then they choose time and place. What woman ever fainted up a tree?"

"She sent her nasty blood all over me. I think the smell must have overpowered me. Faugh! I hate blood."

"I do believe it potently."

"See what a mess she has made me!"

"But with her blood, not yours. I pity the enemy that strives to satisfy you."

"You need not to brag, Maitre Denys; I saw you under the tree, the color of your shirt."

"Let us distinguish," said Denys coloring; "it is permitted to tremble for a friend."

Gerard, for answer, flung his arm around Denys's neck in silence.

--Charles Reade.
From "The Cloister and the Hearth."

=The Secret of the Jade Tlaloc=

"If only this paper on jade were finished!" sighed tall, dignified, blond Dolores. "These notes sound so interesting. 'Jade implements,'" she read, "'found in Mexico--source of mineral not yet discovered--theory that implements are relics of Eastern invasion disproved--jade said to exist in America,' My! I do think jade is the most delightful subject for investigation."

"Um-m!" Elsa, who, like her Spanish mother, was small, quick, dark, and adventure-loving, did not consider jade a particularly fascinating topic for study. "Now if--we--a--we--a----" she ruminated.

"If we--a----?" Dolores's sentences were always clearly thought out before she spoke them.

"If we--a--now if we could finish that paper, we might be able to sell it, you know," Elsa went on. "We certainly haven't an enviably large fortune." She reached into one of the dark pigeon-holes of her father's ponderous desk. "Ook-ook!" she pursed up her full red lips, as she held a yellow scroll from her and gingerly flicked away the dust which had collected upon it since her father's death. "Now here's what I call interesting. An old letter or something, written on agave-leaf paper." From their long association with their father in his archeological researches, the girls had gained a more than superficial knowledge of Aztec customs and antiquities. "'We, the Aztecs, are a proud race,'" she readily translated. "'It is not for the Spaniards to glory in complete victory over us, for though they have conquered our bodies, they have not conquered our spirits. Well may they rejoice in the ruining of our beautiful cities. But when they search, and search in vain, for the wealth which they know has been ours, how they will rage! But their anger shall be as vain as their searching. Those of us who are left will not see the invaders glorying in what was once the splendor of the Aztecs. Rather will we bury, and hide from all future generations, if need be, the secrets of our riches. It is that my descendants may one day scoff at the descendants of those who have made me, who was a prince, a slave, that I am making this record. Among the mountains which the Spaniards have called the "Corderillas" is one in whose top is a hole of great depth, from which it is said, there once flowed streams of liquid fire, the vengeance of the gods upon the people. This mountain stands between two sister mountains of far greater height than itself, and is near the middle of the range.' Why, that might be Ahualtaper, right near here." Elsa had the topography of the country around their home very clearly mapped out in her mind.

Dolores nodded. "Go on," she said.

"'Half-way up the side which faces the rising sun,'" Elsa continued, "'is a ledge, upon which is a rock, apparently one with the mountainside, and in which, when viewed from a distance, can be seen a resemblance to the cross of Tlaloc. One day a descendant of mine will find and displace this rock; whereupon, the entrance to the tomb of my ancestors will be revealed. There are many such tombs and many such mountains as those which I have described, but which I have not named. However, in the particular burial place to which I refer is a jade image of the god Tlaloc. It is studded with valuable turquoise. Where this image is found will also be found what should be the source of untold wealth to the discoverer.

"'In warning, let me say that none but the eldest son of a family must ever know of this document; and should he be tempted, ever, to part with it, let him remember that bodily want is preferable to the curses of the dead!'"

The two girls remained silent for a few moments. "Well," asked Elsa, at last, "what do you think of that?"

Dolores turned again to the desk. "It is interesting," she replied, "but of what use can it ever be to us? We could never find the place. Why, we've been in dozens of burial grottos already, and they are all pretty much alike." She opened another drawer. "Here is father's diary."

The book fell open at the page upon which the last entry had been made. "'May 15'--the day father became ill--'poor wrinkled old Gomez died today,'" she read. "'He wanted to give me information about a jade Tlaloc, some famous image which has been lost. He tried with his last breath to do me the service of aiding me in my research. He gave me also a very ancient manuscript. I do not know where he got it. I hardly feel equal, to-night, to the task of translating it. Perhaps Elsa will do the translation tomorrow. If I could find such an idol, it would be of great value to me in my treatise on jade.'"

Elsa waited long enough only for Dolores to stop reading. "Dolores, we must find that idol."

Dolores looked gravely at her sister. "This is really a serious matter, Elsa. It would save us from the necessity of working if we could find it. But how can you and I alone accomplish anything? We should have to go into the mountains, and have a donkey, and camp in the open air, and----"

"Well," Elsa impatiently interrupted the enumeration of objections, "what of that? You and father and I used often to go into the mountains, and have a donkey, and camp in the open air; and father always depended more upon us than we upon him. You think it over while I get tea." Elsa left her sister sitting alone and looking out of the study windows to the solemn rugged Corderillas.

Dolores did consider the matter, with the result that, after a few weeks of study, of consulting maps and plans, and of preparation for the journey, the sisters were ready to begin the daring exploit whose aim was to complete the investigations which their father had begun.

Clad in rough, unsightly denim, and leading a burro which carried a very considerable store of provisions, they clambered up the jagged sides of Ahualtapec; they tore their way through thickets and fell upon cacti.

"We're lost," panted Dolores, finally, as she pulled the many thorns from her clothing. "Elsa, we're lost."

They had stopped, at about noon on the tenth day of their trip, to rest, and again to consult their maps.

Elsa stood upon a ledge and looked across to where, between two lofty mountains, rising to the south of Ahualtapec, a smaller rock mass showed itself, like a much overgrown hill-the shell of a long extinct volcano, and a very counterpart of Ahualtapec.

"Dolores," she pointed straight before her, "do you remember? A stone in which, when viewed from a distance, can be seen a resemblance to the cross of Tlaloc?"

"Oh, dear," complained Dolores, dejectedly, "and all this time wasted!"

"Now, Dolores!" small Elsa turned about determinedly, "you ought to shout for joy, for that certainly must be it. The rocks are bare around that spot, and you can see it plainly from here. It's on a ledge, too, just like the one we're on. We will start this very minute, Dolores."

Delaying long enough only for Elsa, who had a fine sense of location, to impress upon her mind the position of the cross, they began once more the tedious scrambling, tearing, tumbling down slopes and up slopes, across streams and through, streams; but they did not lose themselves again.

"Do you suppose," Dolores anxiously asked, "that we can ever move it?" as she saw how the ages had packed, and hardened the damp soil about the base of the boulder.

"We must." Elsa was resolved not to be defeated. "We absolutely must," she reiterated.

"How?" demanded Dolores.

Elsa's reply was to unstrap a bag from the burro's back, to take from it two trowels, and silently to offer one to Dolores. No explanation was necessary. For five days the girls scraped and dug away the hardened soil from the lower part of the cross-shaped stone, until at last the block began to tremble as though about to fall.

"Dolores! Dolores! It's top heavy, bless it!" Elsa was enthusiastically, insanely happy.

The fact that the stone was top-heavy made it possible for the girls, by dint of much tugging, heaving, and pushing, to roll it over the ledge, and to send it bumping down the mountainside. A narrow passage, wide enough to admit only one at a time, was thus opened. Pine torches were lit. Even Dolores was excited. They squeezed into the entrance, Elsa first. They rushed through the short tunnel, until, at the end, Elsa stumbled and sank to her knees.

"Oh, my! Dolores, just look!" she was holding her torch down to see what had caused her fall. "It's it," she remarked, disregarding rhetoric, while she pointed to a small turquoise-studded image of Tlaloc, the Neptune of the Aztecs.

The girls carried the idol into the little ante-room which was always a part of the burial grotto of an Aztec noble family. How pleasant, how cool, and damp it seemed in here, after their hot toil outside. The sisters had been in too many tombs to know any fear, to have any feeling of the presence of the dead. Their own breathing sounded loud and labored amid the silence of the cave.

Dolores sat down on the moist floor, and examined the statues; she was thinking of the treasure; but Elsa, now that she was sure of finding the gold, or the jewels, or whatever the promise might have meant, desired to explore the grotto.

From the little ante-room she passed into the larger chamber. Here, for the first time, she felt chilled; she seemed so alone. She was sure she felt a ghost whisper near her. Her feet slipped on the wet earth. On the further side of the tomb she saw upon the ground an urn, on which rested a skull. By the shape of the urn and by the arrangement of the ornaments above it Elsa knew that it contained the ashes of a warrior. A drop of water splashed down from the ceiling and aroused her. She held her torch aloft. She looked unbelievingly at the roof. Then she walked slowly around the room, wonderingly, feeling and scrutinizing the walls.

"Dolores!" she called, "come quick!"

Dolores was not long in coming.

"And here is also what should be the source of untold wealth to the discoverer," Elsa was murmuring. "Dolores, do you see that green, that dull gray? How it shines? Don't you know, Dolores? It's jade, royal jade, Dolores!"

--Dorothea Knoblock.

II. The Society Story

[What the society story is]

Society stories are those non-consequential narratives of modern fashionable life which have in their very lightness their sole excuse for being. They are set up as only partial reflections of the actual. Since their chief purpose is to please, they have no studied realism in them. All things intense and unattractive are omitted. If trouble appears, it is but as "sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh," as one of their authors might promptly quote, and everything is brought to harmonize with everything else at last. Richard Harding Davis for his "Van Bibber" tales seems to have found a wide public.

[The pastoral romance]

An older representative of the society story is the pastoral romance, once a very popular form of the love tale. In it we have a picture of country life, but it is not the hard, toil-beleaguered life of the real peasant. It is the imaginary out-of-doors living-for-a-few-days of the courtier who masquerades as a shepherd and sits cavalierly on a grassy bank with a golden crook in his hand, sighing out his heart in silvery madrigals. His lady-love is no ordinary milk-maid, but a courtly princess on vacation. In this romantic land of shepherd loves, nothing realistic enters. The talk in even the first examples is philosophic and in the later becomes euphuistic as well. The critics maintain that the pastoral romance as a type does not go more than ten years back of the middle of the fourteenth century, although we have "Aucassin and Nicolette" of the thirteenth and "Daphnis and Chloe" of the fifth. The prime fact of the history of the pastoral romance as a society story is that it grew up as a revolt against the licentious realism of the Italian novellieri. The "Arcadia" by Sannazaro, written about 1500, is the book that made the epoch and established the rule for pastoral romance in all languages. Sannazaro took what had been foreshadowed by Boccaccio in the "Ameto" in 1340, and, enriching it with elements derived from Theocritus and Virgil, created the "perfect" example. From Sannazaro, Sir Philip Sidney borrowed the spirit, many episodes, and part of the name for his notable combination of prose and verse--the "Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia." Shakespeare, too, derived much from this important Italian book. For one thing, he took the name Ophelia; for another, his charming society pastoral drama "As You Like It" goes historically back to Sannazaro's "Arcadia" for its lyrics, out-of-doors courting, its real shepherds, its obvious love of nature, its touch of magic, and its wholesome morality. The lack of allegorical significance is also straight example from Sannazaro; but the love chain, the disguised shepherd princesses, the humorous element in connection with the coarse shepherds, a touch of adventure, and the cavalier tone are of later Spanish and English contamination, immediately through Lodge's prose romance "Rosalynd," and more remotely through Greene's three pastorals--"England's Mourning Garment," "Menaphon," and "Pandosto,"--and through Cervantes's "Galatea" and Montemayor's "Diana," and Ribeyro's Portuguese "Fragments."

Though the pastoral romance, as we notice, became more and more artificial, it always remained pure in tone. It centered itself in idealism and stood against the low, utterly debased, more realistic novella, which was its predecessor and continued rival for popularity. The pastoral held the field as the chief and most influential prose form in Spain until the picaresque romance came to be recognized as a distinct genre.

[Suggestions for writing]

To write a modern society story that will be worth while is no easy task; for here an author readily descends to banalities, and the class itself is hardly acceptable to the serious critic. Yet stories of this kind are so popular and form (I am sorry to say) so large a part of the reading of our young women--and our young men, too, for that matter--that the type surely has come to stay for sometime and must be taken account of. To make your story commendable, then, you will need to be original and striking in your choice of situation and to write with a succinctness and verve that will animate even the commonplace. Be careful not to be sentimental. If you touch on love, do so with dignity--with either clean, pure humor, or unaffected seriousness. Try hard to save your hero from being a cad. The namby-pamby, third-generation-millionaire protagonist, if not altogether uninteresting, is surely exasperating to a sensible reader. By playful imitation, you might write a good satire on this class of story. If you do so, you will need to be familiar with one or more of the popular examples in order to use them specifically. Or you might try your hand at a pastoral, just for the history of the thing. If you care to adhere to certain elements of the genre, you could put together under this guise allegorical scenes in which the present lords of the earth figure as weak or lusty shepherds piping a tune to the watch-dogs of war, the sheep of commerce, and the Goddess of Getting-On. If you wish to be more than half serious, you can find countenance in a number of our most recent light stories that undoubtedly turn toward the pastoral. This type, too, will give you a chance at a mixture of prose and verse. Here you can put in some of those fetching sylvan lyrics that you must have composed long before now and have always been afraid to mention.

=The Fur Coat=

Translated by Mrs. J. M. Lancaster. Copyright, 1903, by The Current
Literature Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission.

_Prof. Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch_

BERLIN, November 20.

DEAR GUSTAV--I have some news to tell you to-day which will certainly surprise you. I have separated from my wife, or rather we have separated from each other. We have come to an amicable agreement henceforth to live entirely independent of each other. My wife has gone to her family in Freiburg, where she will no doubt remain. I am for the present in our old house; perhaps in the spring I may look for a smaller house--perhaps not, for I can hardly hope to find so quiet a workroom as I now have, and the idea of moving appals me, especially when I think of my large library. You will, of course, want to know what has happened, though, to tell the truth, nothing has happened. The world will seek for all possible and impossible reasons why two people who married for love and who have for eleven years lived what is called happily together should now have decided to part. Yes, this world which thinks itself so wise, but whose judgments are nevertheless so petty, so superficial, will doubtless be of the opinion that there is something hidden--will include this case too in one of the two great categories prepared for such affairs, because it can not conceive of the fact that life in its inexhaustible variety never repeats itself and that the same circumstances may assume different aspects according to the character and disposition of those interested. I need not tell you this, my dear Gustav. You will understand how two finely organized natures should rebel against a tie which binds them together after they have once become fully convinced that in all matters of real importance a mutual understanding is possible.

My wife and I are too unlike. Between her views of life and mine there yawns an impassable gulf. The first few years I hoped to influence her, to win her to my ways of thinking--she seemed so docile, so yielding, took so warm an interest in my work, so willingly allowed herself to be taught by me. Not till after our children's death did she begin to change. Her grief at this loss--a grief which neither of us has ever been able to live down--matured her, made her independent of me. A tendency to morbid introspection took possession of her, and gave increased tenacity to those ideas and convictions which my influence had hitherto held in check, though not wholly eradicated. She plunged deeper and deeper into those mists of sentimentally fantastic imaginings, passionately demanding my concurrence in her views. She lost all interest in my professional work, evidently regarding the results of my researches in natural science as troops from an enemy's camp. At last there was hardly a subject in the wide realm of nature and human existence on which we agreed. To be sure we never came to an open quarrel, but the breach between us was constantly widening. Every day we saw more and more plainly that though we lived side by side, we no longer belonged to each other. This discovery irritated and distressed us, and at last forced all other feelings into the background. If we had not once loved each other so dearly, or even if we had now ceased to feel a mutual respect, this state of affairs might perhaps have lasted for years, but our ideas of the true meaning of marriage were too lofty, our sense of our own dignity as human beings too profound to permit us to be content with so incomplete a realization of our ideals. I hardly know who spoke first, but our resolution was at once taken, and the decisive words uttered as calmly and naturally as the overripe fruit falls from the tree. For the first time in many years we were able with perfect unanimity of sentiment to discuss a subject of the greatest importance to us both, and this fact alone soothed our overwrought nerves. We parted yesterday with the utmost decorum, without a word of reproach, a note of discord.

The many beautiful memories of our early married life, of the long years we had lived together, made it difficult to refrain from some manifestation of tenderness, and I assure you that I never felt greater respect for my wife than at the moment when, all petty considerations cast aside, the true magnanimity of her nature asserted itself. Her manner, what she said, and also what she did not say, robbed the situation of all trace of the commonplace, and gave it dignity. Deeply moved, almost in tears, we clasped hands in farewell, so we may look back upon the closing scene of our wedded life with unalloyed satisfaction.

I had already, with her consent, referred all business details to our lawyers, for we were not even to communicate with each other by letter.

Life must begin again for both of us, and already I breathe more freely. The Rubicon is passed. I believe that you will congratulate me.

_Prof. Max Wiegand to Dr. Gustav Strauch_

BERLIN, December 12.

DEAR GUSTAV--Pardon me that I have so long delayed thanking you for your answer of friendly sympathy to my last letter.

I have been in no condition to write, and even now find it difficult. You congratulate me without reserve on a step which you regard as essential to my welfare and to my intellectual development, but you do not take into consideration what it means to separate from one who has for eleven years been one's constant companion, day and night. Indeed, it is only during these last dreary weeks that I, myself, have realized what the change signifies to me. Habit is all powerful, especially with men who, like you and me, live in the intellectual world and so require a solid sub-structure.

How are we to take observations from the tower battlements when its foundations are not firmly established? Of course, I am as certain as ever I was that our decision is for the best interests of us both, but in this queer world of ours we can take no step without unlooked-for results.

I am bothered from morn till night with trifles to which I have never given a thought since my bachelor days--things which I will not mention, so absurdly insignificant are they--and yet they rob me of my time and destroy my peace. I am at a loss what steps to take to rid myself of the thousand petty cares and annoyances which my wife has hitherto borne for me. These servants! Now that the cat is away they think that they can do just as they please, and you have no idea of the silly obstacles over which I am continually stumbling, of the wretched pitfalls which beset my path. Here is one instance out of many: For several days it has been very cold, and I can not find my fur coat. With the chambermaid's assistance I have turned the whole house upside down, until she finally remembered that my wife, last spring, sent it to a furrier's to be kept from the moth. But to which furrier? I have been to a dozen and can not find it.

If I had only not agreed with my wife that we were, under no circumstances, to write to each other, I should simply ask her--but it is best so. No strain of the commonplace must mingle with the sad echoes of our farewell. No--a farce never follows a drama. Perhaps she might even imagine that I seize the first pretext to renew relations with her.

Never!

To-day it is six below zero.

_Prof. Max Wiegand to Frau Emma Wiegand_

BERLIN, December 14.

DEAR EMMA--You will be greatly surprised at receiving a letter from me in spite of our mutual agreement, but do not fear that I have any intention of opening a correspondence with you. Our relations terminated with all possible dignity, and the sealed door shall never be re-opened. I have but to ask a simple question which you alone can answer. What is the name of the man to whom you sent my fur coat last spring? Lina has forgotten the address. Hoping soon to receive an answer, for which I thank you in advance,

MAX.

_Frau Emma Wiegand to Prof. Max Wiegand_

FREIBURG, December 15.

DEAR MAX--His name is Palaschke, and he is on Zimmer Street. I can not understand Lina's forgetfulness, as she took the coat there herself.

EMMA.

_Prof. Max Wiegand to Frau Emma Wiegand_

BERLIN, December 17.

DEAR EMMA--I must trouble you once more--for the last time. Herr Palaschke refuses to let the coat go without the ticket, as he has had several disagreeable experiences which have made it necessary to be very strict. But where is the ticket? I spent the whole morning looking for it, and, of course, Lina has not the slightest idea where it is. She flew into a rage when I found a little fault with her, and she leaves the house to-morrow. I prefer paying her till the end of her engagement, and in addition shall give her a moderate Christmas gift, for I can not stand for a great length of time such an impertinent person about me.

Well--be so kind as to write me a line telling me where to find the ticket. I have already taken a severe cold for want of the fur coat.

Hoping that you are well and quite comfortable with your family.

MAX.

_Frau Emma Wiegand to Prof. Max Wiegand_

FREIBURG, December 19.

DEAR MAX--The ticket is either in the second or third upper drawer of the little wardrobe in the dressing-room or in my desk, in the right or left pigeon-hole. I could find it in a minute if I were there. Lina has great faults, but she is very respectable. I doubt whether you can do better, and now, just before Christmas, you will not be able to replace her. You should have put up with her at least a fortnight longer, but it is none of my business. I hope your cold is better. I am quite well.

EMMA.

_Prof. Max Wiegand to Frau Emma Wiegand_

BERLIN, December 21.

DEAR EMMA--The ticket is not to be found either in the wardrobe or in the desk. Perhaps it slipped out when you were packing, and was thrown away. I can think of no other explanation.

To-morrow or next day I will again go to Herr Palaschke, and try to wheedle him out of my property by all possible blandishments and assurances, but to-day I am confined to my room, for my cold has resulted in a severe attack of neuralgia.

I had a dreadful scene with the cook yesterday. On the day of your departure she gave me notice, and when I tried to persuade her to remain she turned on me and told me in a very insolent manner that I knew nothing about house-keeping, and that it was only out of sympathy for you, dear Emma, that she had so long remained with us at such low wages, and that she should leave immediately. I answered calmly, but firmly, that she must stay till the end of her engagement. Then she began to cry and storm, and at last was so outrageously impertinent as to declare that even _you_ could not manage to live with me. I lost my temper and must, I suppose, have called her an "impudent woman," though I can not remember saying it. Unfortunately for me I have had no experience in dealing with viragos.

Two hours later, after supper, I rang and discovered that she was already gone, bag and baggage, leaving in the kitchen a badly spelled _billet doux_, in which she threatened me with a lawsuit for calling her an "impudent woman," in case I should refuse to give her a certificate of character.

I am now entirely without servants. The porter's wife blacks my shoes for a handsome consideration, and brings me from the café meals which ought to be condemned by the health inspector. As you have truly remarked, it will be impossible to replace these women before the New Year, but I have already written to a dozen employment bureaus, and will go myself as soon as I am able to leave the house. This has grown into a long letter, my dear Emma, but when the heart is full the pen runs rapidly.

I also suspect that abominable cook of taking my gold sleeve buttons--those left me by Uncle Friedrich--though I have, of course, no proof. Have you any idea where they are? If so please drop me a line. Good-by, my dear Emma, and I trust you are more comfortable than I am.

Your MAX.

_Frau Emma Wiegand to Prof. Max Wiegand_

FREIBURG, December 23.

DEAR MAX--I have read with much sympathy your account of your little mishaps and annoyances. The cook often spoke to me very much as she did to you, but I put up with it because she is a good cook, and only cooks who know nothing are polite. Now you see what I have had to stand for years, and that there are problems in that department also which can not be solved by natural science.

I can not, at this instance, advise you what to do, and should not consider myself justified in doing so now that our intimate relations have been terminated in so dignified a manner, as you so truly remark in your first letter. As for the furrier's ticket and the sleeve buttons, I will wager that I could find them both in five minutes. You _must_ remember how often you have hunted in vain for a thing which I have found at the first attempt. Men occasionally discover a new truth but never an old button.

Since a correspondence has been begun by you, I have a little request to make. I forgot before I left to ask you for the letters which you wrote me during our engagement, and which at my request you put in your safe. They are my property, and I should like to have them as a reminder of happier days. Will you be so kind as to send them to me?

Wishing you a Merry Christmas,

EMMA.

_Prof. Max Wiegand to Frau Emma Wiegand_

BERLIN, December 25.

MY DEAR EMMA--Your kind wish that I might have a Merry Christmas has not been fulfilled. I never spent so melancholy a Christmas Eve. You will not wonder that I could not bear to accept the invitations of friends--to be a looker-on at family rejoicings--so I stayed at home, entirely alone. I found it utterly impossible to get a servant before New Year's, and yesterday was even without a helper from outside. The porter's wife put a cold supper on the table for me early in the afternoon, for she was too busy later with Christmas preparations for her children. A smoky oil lamp took the place of the Christmas tree which you always adorned so charmingly and with such exquisite taste every year, and there were none of those pretty surprises by which you supplied my wants and wishes almost before I was conscious of them. There was nothing on the Christmas table but my old fur coat, which Herr Palaschke--softened by my entreaties and assurances and perhaps also by the spirit of Christmastide--had allowed me to take the preceding day. It was as cold as charity in the room, for the fire had gone out and it was beyond my skill to rekindle it, so I put on the fur coat, sat down by the smoky lamp, and read over the letters which I wrote you during the time of our engagement and which I had taken from their eleven years' resting-place to send to you to-day.

Dear Emma, I can not tell you how they have moved me. I cried like a child, not over the tragic ending of our marriage alone, but at the change in myself which I recognize. They are very immature and in many ways not in accordance with my present way of thinking, but what a fresh, frank, warm-blooded fellow I was then, and how I loved you! How happy I was! How artlessly and unreservedly did I give myself up to my happiness! Till now I have thought that there has been a gradual, slow change in you alone, but now I see that I also have altered, and God knows, when I compare the Max of those days with the Max of to-day, I do not know to which to give the preference. In the sleepless nights which I have lately spent, I have thought over the possibility of transforming myself into the Max I then was, and grave doubts have suggested themselves whether the differences in our views of matters and things were really as great as they seemed to us, whether there is not outside of them something eternally human, some neutral ground where we might continue to have interests in common.

Try and see, dear Emma, whether such a voice does not speak also to your soul. We can not undo the past, but nothing could give me greater consolation in my present unhappy condition than to know that you could say yes to this question, for your departure has left a void in my house and in my life that I can never, never fill.

Thy most unhappy MAX.

_Frau Emma Wiegand to Prof. Max Wiegand_

FREIBURG, December 27.