lighted and always will delight. William Dane's long prayers, sage advice, and reputation for spotless truth are without power the moment we find him laying upon Silas Marner, his friend of many years, the blame for his own crime. 1 The seven-year-old lad looking straight into his teacher's eyes and answering "I did it," when he knows that his words are sure to bring punishment, arouses our admiration, because the truth always has had power to do this and always will. His sister, helping the smaller children with their wraps, dividing her dainty lunch with the playmate who is able to bring only a crust, always running to help the little ones that fall, carrying the earliest wild flowers to the lame girl who cannot leave her bed, thrills our hearts, for beauty of character always has thrilled thus and always will.

A broad valley dotted with homesteads, alive with grazing cattle, golden with ripening grain, and cooled with a crystal stream, pleases us with its beauty, just as it pleased the ancient Greeks and will please earth's last generations. The mighty, granite-ribbed, snow-topped mountain peak and the limitless ocean, with their power, majesty, and sublimity, affect us differently; they move our deeper natures to a fuller realization of the truth and omnipotence of their Creator.

A great manufacturer is always punctual; is as careful of the public money he helps to administer as of his own; pays every employee at the highest rate; is untouched by flattery; has steel-gray eyes and square forehead and jaw; has never a romp with his children, seldom a smile, no farewell to his wife as he leaves home daily, not a penny of wages for an ill employee, nothing for charity, and never an unnecessary word. Not a whisper is breathed against this man's integrity, for he has truth of character; but no

1 Read again the first two chapters of "Silas Marner."

one loves him, for he lacks beauty of character. The world has always admired the former but has loved the latter, and always will.

The mother bending over her sleeping child, the love in her heart all blossoming in her face, is our ideal of beauty, not because she is "pretty," for we do not notice her features, but because a supreme love is in her expression. This has always been the ideal of beauty, as the many pictured Madonnas testify. It always will be. We always admire such truth as impels Abraham Lincoln, grocer's clerk, to walk miles to return a few cents overcharged on a purchase of tea; we always love the beauty of character that persuades Abraham Lincoln, President, to send a condemned but really noble son back to a widowed mother.

Because literature deals especially with these great manifestations of the things that are eternally true and beautiful it has been defined as ultimate truth and beauty interpreted." 1

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The student "interprets ultimate truth and beauty" when he tells the story of a courageous act, of a kind word, of a helpful smile, of a child's unselfishness, of a bit of charity, of a harsh word conquered; when he describes a winter morning, a singing brook, a surging mob, a desert's dreariness, a city's awakening, a lamb's gambols, a prairie's lavishness, a Christmas morning, a snowstorm or a summer shower, a mine or a mill; when he portrays a character, or explains the sun's power, or one of nature's laws. To do any of these things so as to appeal to the reader's feelings and to make him live through the experience is to interpret truth or beauty.

Exercises.

Ex. I. What ever-powerful feeling or truth is interpreted in "The Ancient Mariner"? In "The Vision of Sir Launfal"? In

1 See Prof. Sherman's edition of "The Princess."

In

"Julius Caesar"? In "Il Penseroso"? In "L'Allegro"? Macaulay's "Addison"? In the books and poems read in class during the past year? In three books or poems read at home?

Read again the chapter on visualization, watching especially what is said concerning the use of the concrete, and then write an interpretation, taking as a subject one of the suggestions in the last paragraph of this chapter.

Pictures as well as literature are interpretative of the true and the beautiful. Examine the pictures in this book and determine what that is eternal is suggested by the artist.

Ex. II. Write a letter of sympathy to a friend in whose family a death has occurred.

In a letter ask the principal of your school to excuse you from literary society or from one study. Be sure to give a reason. In a letter ask a business man who knows you well to write you a recommendation to use when asking for employment.

Write a letter to the president of a rival literary society, proposing a contest between your society and his.

Write a letter to the city ticket agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Pittsburg. Ask him the cost of a trip you hope to make during vacation. You wish to visit half a dozen cities and summer resorts located in at least three different states.

PLEASANT HOURS

After the Painting by Meyer von Bremen

Ex. 1. What makes you feel that this woman is ill? What ideals seem to govern her life? Why do you say so? For whom are these hours pleasant? What do you think is the character of the boy? As you look at the picture what feeling comes over you? What is the cause of this feeling? What is the atmosphere of the picture?

Ex. II. Write a paragraph about this picture, trying to suggest something eternally true or beautiful that the artist has expressed. Write a brief character sketch to make the reader acquainted with this lad. Make use of the incident pictured and of several imaginary incidents.

Write an account of an illness of your own or of that of a friend. Write an account of something you did for your sister or mother when she was ill.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SHORT STORY

(A vote of the readers of "The Critic" a number of years ago decided that of American short stories the ones here named are the Best Twelve: The Man without a Country,1 by E. E. Hale; The Luck of Roaring Camp,2 by Bret Harte; The Great Stone Face, and The Snow Image,' by Nathaniel Hawthorne; The Gold Bug and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe; The Lady, or the Tiger?3 by Frank R. Stockton; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, by Washington Irving; Marse Chan, by Thomas Nelson Page (in the volume "In Ole Virginia" "); Marjorie Daw, 2 by Thomas Bailey Aldrich; The Revolt of Mother, by Mary E. Wilkins (in "A New England Nun and other Stories"). While no such vote can be final, these stories are of so much grace and strength that they will be referred to as typical throughout this chapter. As far as possible they should be read aloud in class or outlined by the instructor, in order that the references to them may be understood.)

I

as an interpretation By interpretation is

THE short story may be defined of a crucial point in a human life. 5 meant a presentation so effective in its appeal to the feelings that it will force the reader to undergo, imaginatively, the experience under consideration, and to divine much of the meaning of the early and later years of the complete life.

Such a crucial test may be almost wholly physical; or it may be mental, as in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," in which the crucial teșt is not the murders but the solution of their mystery; or it may be spiritual, that is, involving

1 Little, Brown, & Co.

2 Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.

3 Charles Scribner's Sons.

4 Harper & Brothers.

5 Mrs. Edith Wharton has published a volume of short stories under the title "Crucial Instances,"