and dipped the coat in the blood; and they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy son's coat or no. And he knew it, and said, It is my son's coat; an evil beast hath devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces. And Jacob rent his clothes, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him. And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh's, and captain of the guard.

In this passage all the main narrative details are joined by "and," except in one case where the adversative idea is represented by "but," and in another where "thus," expressing a modal relation with something of summarizing effect, joins the sentence to what precedes. Simplicity is the noteworthy characteristic of the style: the narrative details merely accumulate without suggestion of complication. According to modern usage, where the tendency of written prose is toward the abruptness of conversational style, this fully conjoined method would be open to the charge of monotony and immaturity. The type is familiar to all critics of undergraduate composition.

Compare with the simplicity of the scriptural narrative the following account chosen from Scott's Highland Widow:

Whilst the women thus discoursed together, as they watched the corpse of Allan Breack Cameron, the unhappy cause of his death pursued her lonely way across the mountain. While she remained within sight of the bothy, she put a strong constraint on herself, that by no alteration of pace or gesture, she might afford to her enemies the triumph of calculating the excess of

her mental agitation, nay, despair. She stalked, therefore, with a slow rather than a swift step, and, holding herself upright, seemed at once to endure with firmness that woe which was passed, and bid defiance to that which was about to come. But when she was beyond the sight of those who remained in the hut, she could no longer suppress the extremity of her agitation. Drawing her mantle wildly round her, she stopped at the first knoll, and climbing to its summit, extended her arms up to the bright moon, as if accusing heaven and earth for her misfortunes, and uttered scream on scream, like those of an eagle whose nest has been plundered of her brood. Awhile she vented her grief in these inarticulate cries, then rushed on her way with a hasty and unequal step; in the vain hope of overtaking the party which was conveying her son a prisoner to Dumbarton. But her strength, superhuman as it seemed, failed her in the trial, nor was it possible for her, with her utmost efforts, to accomplish her purpose.

Here we have a distinctly different effect. In this paragraph the connectives are as generously expressed as in the passage regarding Joseph's coat, but with far greater variety. We have in the passage from Scott not only the idea of chronological sequence, but also of simultaneous, of consequent, and of contrasting action as well. Compared with the extract from the Old Testament this presents greater complexity of structure; in fact, it reveals an approximation towards plot.

In contrast to the leisurely and fully detailed method of the preceding articulated paragraphs we may take the following incident from chapter xviii of Macaulay's History of England:

Glenlyon and his men committed the error of despatching their hosts with firearms instead of using the cold steel. The peal and flash of gun after gun gave notice, from three different parts of the valley at once, that murder was doing. From fifty

cottages the half-naked peasantry fled under cover of the night to the recesses of their pathless glen. Even the sons of MacIan, who had been especially marked out for destruction, contrived to escape. They were roused from sleep by faithful servants. John, who, by the death of his father, had become the patriarch of the tribe, quitted his dwelling just as twenty soldiers with fixed bayonets marched up to it. It was broad day long before Hamilton arrived. He found the work not even half performed. About thirty corpses lay wallowing in blood on the dunghills before the doors. One or two women were seen among the number, and a yet more fearful and piteous sight, a little hand, which had been lopped in the tumult of the butchery from some infant. One aged Macdonald was found alive. He was probably too infirm to fly, and, as he was above seventy, was not included in the orders under which Glenlyon had acted. Hamilton murdered the old man in cold blood. The deserted hamlets were then set on fire; and the troops departed, driving away with them many sheep and goats, nine hundred kine, and two hundred of the small shaggy ponies of the Highlands.

Here every sentence-articulation is suppressed. The reader no longer moves on step by step; he leaps from detail to detail. Between each sentence and its successor there is a distinct gap, but no conjunctive or adverbial bridge spans the chasm. The result is far greater animation and force. If continued too far, this device, like that of a fully articulated style, loses through sheer monotony, but the monotony now results in weariness from sustained mental exertion, from too long a run. In the other case the monotony did not weary so much as it cloyed. The device of asyndeton in the item, as in longer narrative, is adapted to a theme of vigor, rapidity, dash. It secures force and nervous energy, but is easily carried too far.

The matter of coherence, however, is not limited to the considerations of initial and terminal connectives: coherence is affected also by internal articulation. The temporal relation that enters so essentially into the narrative item can be expressed in a variety of ways, each possessing its own particular shade of significance, and the general character of the whole is attributable in no small degree to the type of structure selected. A very simple illustration will show what is meant by the value of internal connectives. Consider the single sentence:

So artfully did he prepare the road for his favorable reception at the court of this prince that he was at once and universally welcomed as a benefactor.1

As it stands, this sentence conveys but a single principal idea, composed of two essential parts, standing to each other in the relation of cause and effect. Disturb the relation inherent in "so" and "that," and the highly coherent aspect of this complex idea is lost. The sentence at once falls apart into two independent units, the bond between them being no longer clearly expressed but left to the interpretation of the reader; for example,

He artfully prepared the road for his favorable reception at the court of this prince; and he was at once and universally welcomed as a benefactor.

The relation that is indicated at the semicolon might be,

probably would be, interpreted as that of cause and effect, and yet it might well be the mere sequence of chronological succession, a very different idea. If, now, the sentence were to read:

Although he artfully prepared the road for his favorable reception at the court of this prince, yet he was at once and universally welcomed as a benefactor,

1 De Quincey: Revolt of the Tartars.

it at once becomes evident that the logical values have been radically changed, and the reader must adjust his mind to a wholly different context. The successive variations show that within the sentence coherence-words are of great importance in exactly expressing the idea existent in the mind of the writer.

Not to go too deeply into the mechanics of the sentence, the clause, the phrase, and the various classes of modifiers, it may be said that in general the effects of connective expression and suppression are the same within as between sentences. A narrative item constructed of sentences in which there is but a succession of coördinated clauses, similar in structure and cumulative in character, will be marked by simplicity, but often at the risk of monotony. Greater complexity, more careful regard to coherence of details, as shown by the subordination of one idea to another, not only presents the narrative theme with greater exactness, but, by throwing the stress where it logically belongs, approximates in a very rudimentary way the complexity of well grouped plot structure. In other words, due attention to coherence within the sentence contributes also to clearness and emphasis. For example, to cite a single sentence in illustration of a principle that in its extension characterizes the entire item, take the following:

That dread voice of his that shook the hills when he was angry, fell in ordinary talk very pleasantly upon the ear, with a kind of honied, friendly whine, not far off singing, that was eminently Scottish.1

Now if one were to recast this sentence into the form that frequently is found in the work of the thoughtless or

1 Stevenson's Memories and Portraits. By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.