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Newcomes. As a brief example, let us look at the following from Mr. Hamlin Garland's Up the Coolly:

When Grant came in at noon Mrs. McLane met him at the door with a tender smile on her face.

"Where's Howard, Grant?"

"I don't know," he replied, in a tone that implied "I don't care." The dim eyes clouded with quick tears.

"Ain't you seen him?"

"Not since nine o'clock."

"Where do you think he is?"

"I tell yeh I don't know. He'll take care of himself; don't worry."

He flung off his hat and plunged into the washbasin. His shirt was wet with sweat and covered with dust of the hay and fragments of leaves. He splashed his burning face with the water, paying no further attention to his mother. She spoke again, very gently, in reproof:

"Grant, why do you stand out against Howard so?"

"I don't stand out against him," he replied harshly, pausing with the towel in his hands. His eyes were hard and piercing. "But if he expects me to gush over his coming back, he's fooled, that's all. He's left us to

paddle our own canoe all this while, and, so far as I'm concerned, he can leave us alone hereafter. He looked out for his precious hide mighty well, and now he comes back here to play big gun and pat us on the head. I don't propose to let him come that over me."

Grant had come in from his work, and with his feet released from his chafing boots, in his wet shirt and milk-splashed overalls, sat at the kitchen table reading a newspaper which he held close to a small kerosene lamp. He paid no attention to any one. His attitude, curiously like his father's, was perfectly definite to Howard. It meant that from that time forward there were to be no words of any sort between them. It meant that they were no longer brothers, not even acquaintances. "How inexorable that face!" thought Howard.

He turned sick with disgust and despair, and would have closed his trunk without showing any of the presents, only for the childish expectancy of his mother and Laura.

"Here's something for you, mother," he said, assuming a cheerful voice, as he took a fold of fine silk from the trunk and held it up. "All the way from Paris." He laid it on his mother's lap and stooped and kissed her, and then turned hastily away to hide the tears that came to his own eyes as he saw her keen pleasure.

"And here's a parasol for Laura. I don't know how I came to have that

in here. And here's General Grant's autobiography for his namesake," he said, with an effort of carelessness, and waited to hear Grant rise.

"Grant, won't you come in?" asked his mother, quaveringly.

Grant did not reply nor move. Laura took the handsome volumes out and laid them beside him on the table. He simply pushed them to one side and went on with his reading.1

Characterizing a person by showing the influence he exerts upon others is an expedient closely related to the "description by effects" which we studied in the preceding chapter. Although such a method may seem to be artificial, we may frequently see the basis of it in actual life. It is not difficult to tell when a well-known person enters a concert hall or theater by the expression of pleasure or displeasure on the faces of those who have already assembled; it is not much more difficult to estimate the character of the person at the other end of the telephone line by the manner in which the busy man talks to him; and it is quite possible to form some notion of the character of our fellow beings on a street car if we simply observe the miraculous change of expression on the face of some man who watches them enter. In literature we may see this method employed effectively in The House of the Seven Gables, where we learn of Judge Pyncheon's qualities through his influence upon Phoebe. Another excellent example is in Blackmore's Lorna Doone. When Jan met the handsome lady and she looked at him "very kindly," he took off his cap, he tells us, " without asking wherefore." Likewise in Treasure Island, we distrust Blind Pew because of the effect he produces upon those about him, especially the Captain.

Character portrayal by contrast consists in bringing personages that are very unlike into such close relation that the differences in their appearance, their speech, their conduct, or their influence on their associates stand out sharply. The principle of contrast, important in any kind of writing, is strikingly effective in characterization. Iago recognized its strength when he contemplated the death of Cassio:

1 Published in Main Travelled Roads. Harper and Brothers.

If Cassio do remain,

He hath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly;1

Experienced story-writers and playwrights are constantly alert for opportunities to bring character contrast into use; and the great novels attest its efficacy. In Tom Jones we have Tom and Blifil; in The Mill on the Floss, Tom and Maggie, as well as Tom and Philip; in Adam Bede, Seth and Adam and Dinah and Hetty; in Vanity Fair, Amelia and Becky, as well as George and Dobbin. Nothing is better established in the art of story-writing than this principle.

Probably the most difficult means of characterization is that of revealing the person's qualities by setting forth his habitual environment. This expedient is infrequently used, not only because it is difficult under any circumstances, but because the range of circumstances in which it is at all possible is very narrow. Nevertheless, like other difficult artistic means, it is singularly pleasing when employed skillfully. It is as if we were to take a reader into a carelessly kept room and say, "Don't you know the kind of student who lives here?" or to point out an attractive farm and ask, " Can't you guess what kind of farmer lives over there?" or to say of some isolated village in the hills, "Living there would make any man go to sleep; so you know the kind of man Charley is now at sixty." Easily and incidentally the reader gains the information necessary to an understanding of the character.

If we but reflect upon the tremendous influence of a name, we must see at once the importance of using names as means of characterization. Of course, in real life we overlook the unpleasantness or the attractiveness of a name after we learn that it does not fit the person to whom it is applied; we know that he was not responsible for the inconsistency, and that his parents were not responsible for at least a part of it. But in the life of fiction we scarcely forgive an author who deliberately misnames one of his characters; and, it might be added, we scarcely cease

1 Othello, Act V, Scene I, 18-20.

praising him if he names all of them well. Stevenson, who always named his own characters appropriately, admired Heywood for his touch of names: "He had obviously been present, and heard Purser and Clinton take death by the beard with similar braggadocios. Purser and Clinton, names of pirates; Scarlet and Bobbington, names of highwaymen. He had the touch of names, I think. No man I ever knew had such a sense, such a tact, for English nomenclature; Rainsforth, Lacy, Audley, Forrest, Acton, Spencer, Frankford so his names run." "" 1

Still, it should not be understood that a character is necessarily misnamed when his name is wholly out of keeping with his dominant personal characteristics, his social standing, or his intellectual attainments; the author sometimes seeks to make the contrast between name and person so great that the effect is humorous. Mark Twain's Electra and Clytemnestra, the wife and daughter of a bookkeeper, appeal to us in this way. But ordinarily, where the purpose of the writer is not solely humorous, there must be a fitness of name and person. To be sure, the name ought not to be a mere advertising label. Jingle, Mutanhed, Sowerberry, M'Choakumchild, Tite Barnacle, Podsnap, Brass, and Muzzle may be permissible in Dickens, but they do not represent the highest art. The names that are actually employed in everyday life afford a sufficiently great source from which to draw.

5. The twofold problem in character portrayal. These different means of character delineation are rarely employed separately. Although every writer doubtless has some favorite method which he uses more frequently than any other, he learns sooner or later that he must resort to every expedient he can bring to bear. In his efforts he is usually confronted by two problems. The first of these is to prevent his point of view from rendering some of the means of characterization impracticable. If he is telling his story in the first person, for instance, he cannot very well have the hero say what he himself is like, unless he does so quite incidentally. The second problem is to make the 1 A letter to W. E. Henley. The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Scribner's.

characters consistent. In other words, when an author has told us that the hero possesses a smooth temper, this admirable quality ought to be further exemplified in his facial expression, in his speech, in his conduct, in his influence on his associates, in the environment which he creates for himself, and, when it is possible to control the matter, even in his name. Readers are entitled to expect that every part of the narrative will contribute to the first impression they received when they made the character's acquaintance.

C. SETTING

I. The function of the setting. Action and character constitute the chief part of the writing of narration. Nevertheless, significant events participated in by characters who convince us of their reality are not always sufficient to create the deepest impression of truth. The transactions must have a setting; that is, we must feel that they have happened at the right time in the right place. All that is suggested by the synonymous terms "local color," "background," and "environment" is included in the term "setting." It usually embraces not only the general period of time, but the season of the year, and if the exigencies of the narrative demand it, a suggestion of the time of day; not only the general suggestion of the place of the action, but the immediate locality. The impression of truth will probably be rendered still more definite if such circumstances as social standards and the spirit of the community life are made to serve the writer's purpose. Considered less generally, the function of setting is threefold: it should "realize " the action; it should influence or justify character; and it should largely determine tone or atmosphere.

In the older stories in English literature there seemed to be a very slight relation between the events and many of the places described. In truth, a full confession from readers would probably disclose a general repugnance to these descriptive parts. The reader omits them because they are obviously unrelated to

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