There was something about the coast town of Dunnet that made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine. Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges by the landing. These houses made the most of their seaward view, and there was a gayety and determined floweriness in their bits of garden-ground; the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore and its background of spruces and balsam firs. When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a life-long affair.1

This poetic insight, this peculiar sensing of the human element in nature, is the secret of true local color. It demands appreciation of the inherent unity that combines all constituent parts into one individual entity, whether we call it color, tone, personality, or spirit.

When the very soul of a locality is caught, it may of course be utilized in any of the various ways already indicated as the methods of setting. It may render effective the action by its very fitness and harmony; or by contrast it may throw out into relief events wholly uncongenial amidst such setting. But whatever be the particular method by which the local color is utilized, it brings to the narrative unity of impression and effectiveness of presentation.

Atmosphere

Closely allied to "local color" is "atmosphere." The atmosphere of a narrative may be defined as the product

1 Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

of setting and action combined. It is found when the two elements are so conjoined that one distinct character pervades the whole. There is atmosphere, for example, in the opening scene of Macbeth, where the tragic weirdness of witches, heath, storm, and night so combine with inordinate passion and bloody deeds as to create a general, all-pervading note of tragedy. The same thing is illustrated in Irving's Rip Van Winkle, of which the opening paragraph reads: —

Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they ́are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory.

The magical hues and shapes of the Kaatskills, half revealed, half outlined in the gray vapors of the evening sun, throwing their long shadows across the misty valleys, are altogether in keeping with the mystical legend of Rip's long slumber and of his adventure with the spectral crew of the Half-Moon. Excellent instances of atmosphere are also to be found in the tales of Poe, wherein gloom and horror are projected against a background of sombreness and desolation.

Like local color, atmosphere demands primarily a sense of unity, but there is a difference. In seeking at

mosphere the artist allows no dissonance in his details. Everything must harmonize action and setting. His task is largely one of elimination. On the other hand, in seeking for local color the writer excludes nothing; rather, he courts multiplicity of detail and seeks the ultimate combination that is the incarnation of them all.

Symbolic Setting

The third variety of setting, the symbolic, is, as suggested by the name, confined in great degree to allegorical narrative. While, like all setting, it brings out with increased power the details of the action, at the same time it possesses a value of its own. In The Great Stone Face, for example, the titanic features sculptured on the precipice are more than a mere effective natural setting for the development of Ernest's simple personality. The reader feels that the face symbolizes something of the ideal, of the spiritual, the constant contemplation of which inspires the true man to the highest attainment.

In A Tale of Two Cities Dickens makes effective use of this phase of setting in the following passage:

The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long and white, and some of the thunder gusts that whirled into the corner caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.

"The raindrops are still falling, large, heavy, and few," said Doctor Manette. "It comes slowly."

"It comes surely," said Carton.

They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do;

as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for the Lightning, always do.

There was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep was there.

"A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!" said Darnay, when they had listened for a while.

"Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?" asked Lucie. "Sometimes I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied — but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn -"

"Let us shudder too. We may know what it is?”

"It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as we originate them, I think; they are not to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by and by into our lives."

"There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so," Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way.

The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight.

"Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?"

"I don't know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my father's."

"I take them into mine!" said Carton. “I ask no questions and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them! by the Lightning." He added the last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window.

"And I hear them!" he added again, after a peal of thunder. "Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious!"

It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment's interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at midnight.

The setting that runs through this episode of the thunder storm is not primarily for the more effective projection of the action, but, as in Hawthorne's story of Ernest, it is written with view to the implication. The scene is allegorical, and foreshadows the tragic events destined to appear in the drama of Lucie and her father. The hurrying footsteps, Carton's thoughtless words, the onward rush and roar of the approaching storm unmistakably represent the many people that are to enter their lives, the sacrifice that Carton is to make for Lucie without stipulating conditions, the darkness that is to settle over them all as the Revolution closes in. The spectral waving of the curtains, the crashing of the thunder, the mysterious footsteps ever coming and ever going but never passing, all these details contribute to the fatefulness of the scene and foretell something in store.

Symbolic setting is essentially unlike local color, indeed unlike almost all other dramatic setting, in that while in one sense it is background, it is, in fact, part of the action. It is akin to atmosphere rather than to local color, but it is more even than atmosphere. In Hawthorne's story of Ernest the setting, it is true, is peculiarly in harmony with Ernest's spiritual development, but one who should see in the setting nothing more than this would lose much of what the legend is intended to convey. Similarly, the passage from Dickens would lose much, if not all, of its significance were the reader to