it not made apparent that he is aware of his attempts. As a matter of fact, my conception of the character of Jake was that he was not aware of any desire to make good. He did his duty as he saw it; he was in no way conscious of being a hero. So in order to keep him true to form, I had to introduce the two purely lay figures of the Captain and the Lieutenant. They were enabled to say certain things and to phrase the wager for it was virtually a wager - quickly and incisively. Then, my own experience later in the war in deciding upon men to be promoted to noncommissioned officers led me to insert the -- comment that a man's progress depended upon his getting a good name, or rather on his not getting a bad name. There is no setting, not even that of background, of the recruiting office in the first episode. That is explained by two considerations. First, I wanted to hurry up the Beginning; second, I wanted to keep it nebulous, because I did not wish to give any inkling as to which particular colony I was dealing with. As a matter of fact, the First Colonials had as originals the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. Originality and Ingenuity By JOHN F. WHEELOCK A SELECTION of some noteworthy examples of original THE CHRISTIAN BITE, BY MANUEL KOMROFF, IN THE MARCH ATLANTIC To Mr. Komroff belongs the credit for the most divertingly original idea in a story this month. Charles Adams Scott, "born in Boston, the son of a clergyman," rages about the narrowness of the Christian world: "I hate this Christian world we live in. I hate its cheap morals, I hate its mean standards, I hate everything about it! It is all small and petty! Narrow, tight, two-by-four lives watered with a stuff called goodness and pressed into a mould hardened by tradition. The Romans were right. They cast the Christians into an arena. They fed them to lions and enjoyed every minute of it. They paid admission to see the spectacle and I'd gladly pay a good deal to see - Well, I hate them, anyway." He evolves this brilliant scheme: 'What is in the back of my mind is a plan that will knock this narrow Christian world into a cocked hat. I am going to stage a Roman sacrifice on a grand scale. I will hire a big place like the Yale Bowl and get a couple of lions from a menagerie and then throw in a Christian.' "You are mad,' I cried. "Not so mad as you think. It will be a great gesture and attract attention. It will shake the very foundations of our society.' ""You will have the world against you!' "No, not at all. We don't have to sacrifice a good Christian we can get hold of a bad one. And nobody can object to that. Even on their own standards they could not object.' "What standard. ?' "Christian standards!' Scott yelled. 'In the Christian world that we live in, only the good have any right of existence.' 'Surely you're not serious,' I protested. 'And where will you find this Christian for the mad gesture that you think will rock foundations?' "Wait and see!' "That evening he showed me a copy of the letter he had typewritten to the State's Prison. He explained his plan at length and requested that he be given the next criminal who was about to be executed . . ." The remainder of the story tells why this novel idea finally proved impractical. HIS FATHER'S HOUSE, BY JAY GELZER, IN MARCH GOOD HOUSEKEEPING Divorce and the attendant mixed social relation is a fertile field for the seeker after short-story plots. This story is an old plot, treated from a new angle. A fourteen-year-old boy, who has been brought up by his mother since her divorce, is sent for by his father. Although his mother has lived modestly, Kenneth finds his father immensely wealthy; his father's new wife, Paula, is a stunning beauty; and there is a half-brother, Joey, six years old. But the element on which his mother has brought him up - love is missing in his father's house, except between him and his father. This is so, the boy realizes, because his father and mother still love each other, in spite of the divorce. Paula, the new wife, appears as the one who has stolen the father and yet failed to make him happy. Kenneth decides "Paula was n't to be blamed because she had wanted to be happy! Everybody wanted to be happy - so much that sometimes people took their happiness at the expense of somebody else's happiness. If Paula had taken her happiness at the expense of Moms', was n't he now wanting Moms' happiness at the expense of Paula's?" Telling of events largely as they appeared to Kenneth, the author is faced with the problem of endowing the boy with perceptions normally beyond those of a fourteen-year-old. To minimize this necessity, eavesdropping is employed a time-honored device: "Paula knew of the growing intimacy and was resenting it, feeling herself excluded and Joey thrust from his rightful place. She said as much one evening when he (Kenneth) was half asleep in a highbacked chair in the library, and Paula and his father had come in together, not seeing him. "You care more for her son than for mine!' "I never discriminate between the two boys, my dear,' remonstrated his father. "Not outwardly, perhaps, but the preference is there.' "A pause. Uneasily Kenneth wondered if he should make his presence known. If he kept very still, they might go away without knowing he had heard, saving both themselves and him the embarrassment of discovery. "Paula spoke again, something hard and accusing springing out in her rich voice. 'Her son is holding you from my son — just as she has always held you from me.' "He could n't, decided Kenneth uncomfortably, stay in his chair a second longer, . . .” Even with this information, the author does not consider Kenneth sufficiently apprised, and later there is another eavesdropping incident: ". . . And once he heard an exchange of heated words as he joined them. "If your heart remained with her - why did you marry me?' "His father, then, apparently trying to puzzle out something. 'I suppose -' he said, 'that a man might be betrayed by beauty into a momentary forgetfulness of all else, while his heart remained where it was given.' . . . 'I wonder said Paula, her words reaching Kenneth as he tiptoed out of the room, and halting him on the threshold by the tragic import, 'if thieves ever gain any real happiness with stolen gold?'" Of course, eventually Paula leaves, and Kenneth's final conception of the situation, and of the part he must play in it, comes through another bit of eavesdropping: "Going softly across the thickly carpeted hall, he looked in at the playroom where Mademoiselle and the cook were whispering across a table bountifully laden with food. "She left the boy,' Mademoiselle was saying distinctly. 'But of course she would! She never wanted him.' "A certainty came to Kenneth that Joey was not asleep. That he lay inside the inner room listening to what was not good for any little boy to hear. "Tiptoeing across the floor, unperceived by the two women, he closed the door of the bedroom behind him." Listeners may hear no good of themselves, yet in this case, anyway, great good may result from listening, for Kenneth, moved to comfort Joey, discovered that "There was room for both of them in his father's house, which had suddenly become home." GIGOLO, BY SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS, IN MARCH RED BOOK A recurrent phrase may often be used effectively to hold the reader's interest while necessary phases of the situation are being explained; a phrase or an idea introduced at the beginning of a story may appear again at the very end, to remind the reader of the author's unity of purpose and effect. Mr. Adams employs both devices, using a remark which has nothing to do with the real theme of this story, being merely the ludicrous phrase of an intoxicated man. The story opens: "Mr. Wimpf had said it before. He now said it again: 'If there's anything I hate, it's an unbalanced party.'" The party is "unbalanced" by the absence of one man, and a substitute is picked off a park bench, and made to understand that he is to spend an evening dancing, without cost to himself; the explanation is not accomplished without many reiterations of the sentiment, "If there's anything I hate, it's an unbalanced party." Then, after the hero (off the park bench) and the heroine have had a chance to become acquainted: "Mr. Wimpf's glassy eye greeted them coldly. "If there's anythin' I don't luh-like,' stated Mr. Wimpf in thick and ominous ac cents, "s a nun-balanced party.' And forthwith he became so completely an unbalanced party himself, that they had to remove two chairs and a table, which he had carried down with him, before restoring him to the perpendicular." Thus the unessential Mr. Wimpf is removed from the picture, and the story goes on with the efforts of the hero to make something of himself, abetted by the heroine. He succeeds, and partly through his own efforts, partly through those of the girl, is reconciled with his father. And the final scene recalls the beginning, thus: "He and Mother and I are going to meet for supper tonight,' said young Jones eagerly. 'They'd be tickled pink if you'd make it four-' Thomas Hardy's First Draft may be called a small sclver clock: in other words it 7 Krowing wil recessity- pulled out ク Me body extremely to one side, compressing ie Gamere mass of wrinkles a well. mouth & face on account the exertion refined, & moving on a certam December morning Summy, & exceptionally mild might have regarded FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF HARDY'S "FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD," MUCH REDUCED IN SIZE (FROM "THE AMENITIES OF BOOK-COLLECTING"; BY COURTESY OF LITTLE, BROWN, & Co.) Cruel Critic: So you want to know what I think of your plan for a novel? Unappreciated Genius: Yes, please. C. C. Well, to begin with, I don't think you know anything about your heroine. U. G.: Who? Janet? Oh, how can you say that? She's very close friend of mine! C. C.: Well, what are the most significant things about Janet? U. G.: Don't know. What do you think? C. C. I don't know her. All I know is what you have written here in this first rough draft of the first chapter, and it is rather confused. You say right at the beginning, for instance, that she never lets anyone know what she thinks or is doing any more than is possible. That's rather interesting, but you do not develop or explain this; you go off into something else at once. U. G.: Um; I see; never thought of that. C. C. Here also on the very first page you speak of her secretiveness, her loathing of the physical appearance of a man who was courting her, her yearning for the embraces of another lover, and, having sprung all this, you pop off and tell of the flapperishness of a younger sister. It all makes me think you have no working idea or pattern of her character. U. G.: Well, how can I get that pattern? C. C.. Trace her most often repeated acts back to their motives; examine these motives; single out the important ones and develop them. U. G. But she has no very important motives or outstanding characteristics. She's just an ordinary wife in a rather ordinary family. C. C. All right that's just what you need for a realistic novel- just that type of woman; you want the average; but are you so sure that she has well-marked characteristics, all evenly balanced, happy, good and successful? U. G.: Yes, I believe she has; I ought to know; I've known her most of my life. C. C. Well, let's see: if she is good and happy, she has virtues, you will agree; what are they? U. G. She teaches Sunday School. Last Saturday night she went home earlier than usual so she could get up in time to go to her Sunday School class .. |