months that have intervened since her death. But it is when the husband is faced by the temptation to accept an inheritance which legally, though not justly, belongs to him—it is then that the influence of the wife's assertive character silently and determinedly dictates the correct decision. The husband's pressing financial difficulties, the urgings of the relatives, the unquestioned legality of the bequest—these are all finally swept aside by the subtle workings of a quietly persisting ethical force.
Sometimes an author reveals the strength and wisdom of one of his characters by allowing this character to yield to the wisdom and domination of another. I am thinking of Mrs. Comer's story, The Wealth of Timmy Zimmerman.[1] As we read the first part of this narrative, we are interested only in Timmy Zimmerman and the personal character problems which the huge profits of the tobacco trust suddenly thrust upon this uncultured but good-souled parvenu. We watch him in his early struggles so full of energy and bold emprise; we rejoice with him in his significant financial triumphs, and later we watch him as he tries, by an expensive building enterprise, by tours through Europe, by the rapid and careless driving of his ten-thousand dollar red automobile, to win back the nervous contentment that was the happy companion of those early years of adventurous poverty. He dominates each separate situation, but he does not solve his problem. It is only when he meets Molly Betterton and sees himself as analyzed by her candid native acumen, that he learns his own weakness and the true potentialities of his wealth. Her character is strong enough to win dominion over him; it is not strong enough to dominate the story and lure the reader away from the controlling interest in the personality whose career the reader has so intently watched. The unity of impression is firmly and continuously centered in the portrayal of Timmy Zimmerman's character, and it is that which tautly holds the reader's attention in leash.
A more recent story that secures its chief interest from character portrayal is Mr. Arthur Russell Taylor's Mr. Squem. Mr. Squem is a traveling man who sells Mercury rubber tires. He wears clothes that arrest attention—broad striped affairs that seemed stripes before they were clothes; his talk is profusely interlarded with vulgar but picturesque slang; he is far removed from the academy. Brought into direct contrast with the Reverend Allan Dare and Professor William Emory Browne, his crudity is the more grossly apparent. It is later enhanced by the glimpse we get of his room—'extremely dennish, smitingly red as to walls, oppressive with plush upholstery. A huge deerhead, jutting from over the mantel, divided honors with a highly-colored September Morn, affrontingly framed. On a shelf stood a small bottle. It contained a finger of Mr. Squem, amputated years before, in alcohol.'
But in the midst of a railroad wreck, we lose all thought of these banalities and crudities; we take Mr. Squem for what he really is—a genuine, large-hearted, efficient minister unto his fellow men. The impression he creates dominates the entire situation.
Of the classic stories which admirably illustrate this method of securing a unity of impression through concentrated character interest, we like to revert to Bret Harte's Tennessee's Partner. It is of small moment that we do not know this man's name—of small moment indeed that he seems, throughout his mining career at Sandy Bar, to have been content to have his personality dimmed by the somewhat more luminous aura of Tennessee. But when Tennessee's repeated offences bring him to trial before Judge Lynch, and finally to his doom on the ominous tree at the top of Morley's Hill, Tennessee's partner comes suddenly upon the scene and overpoweringly dominates the situation. We close our reading of the story completely impressed by the devoted loyalty of Tennessee's partner—the loyalty that creates the unified impression.
And this same unity of impression thus secured in The Clearest Voice, The Wealth of Timmy Zimmerman, Mr. Squem, and Tennessee's Partner by concentrated interest in character, is easily discernible, in scores of other stories. The method is artistically employed by Hawthorne in The Great Stone Face, in Maxim Gorky's Tchelkache, Turgenef's A Lear of the Steppes, J. M. Barrie's Cree Queery and Myra Drolby, Thomas Nelson Page's Marse Chan, Henry James's The Real Thing, Joseph Conrad's The Informer, and such well-known Atlantic stories as Anna Fuller's The Boy, Esther Tiffany's Anna Mareea, Florence Gilmore's Little Brother, Ellen Mackubin's Rosita, Charles Dobie's The Failure, Clarkson Crane's Snipe, and Christina Krysto's Babanchik. Indeed the list is well-nigh inexhaustible, and is constantly being increased by the many gifted writers who, enriching our current literature, see in personal character the germ of story-interest.
Unified impression secured by plot
Just as in looking at a finished piece of artistic tapestry we get a sense of harmonious design, so in contemplating the events of a well-told story, our sense of artistic completeness is satisfied by the skill displayed in the weaving and interweaving of incident—such weaving and interweaving as bring the significant events into the immediate foreground, and group the items of lesser moment in such an unobtrusive manner as to merge them into harmony with the main design.
Preceding the beginning of any story, we assume the existence of a state of repose. Either there is nothing happening, or, if events are happening, they are simply happening in the atmosphere of dull and inconsequential routine, and are accordingly without the pale of narratable notice. Then, suddenly, or gradually, something happens to disturb this repose; and to this initial exciting force are traceable the succeeding events, with such varied culminations as prosperity, or poverty, or dejection, tragedy or joy, or restored calm, or any one of the multitudinous finalities that life brings with her in her equipage.
The whole principle of plot, as here briefly analyzed, is simply and artistically revealed in Mr. Ernest Starr's The Clearer Sight—an admirable example of a story whose unity is secured largely by the effective handling of situation and incident. To Noakes, the young scientist who is the central character in the story, the master chemist, Henry Maxineff, has given certain general suggestions for a formula which will give an explosive of great value and of high potential power. The young man, following these general lines, discovers that, by slight additions and alterations, he can successfully work out the formula and immediately sell his secret to a foreign government. The sum he would thus secure would amply justify him in proposing marriage to Becky Hallam, the girl of his choice. We watch him in his brisk experiments and in his conclusive yielding to the temptation. We see him betraying his employer and at the same time failing to meet the standard of confidence which is demanded by the girl he loves. Right in the midst of these scientific successes and these ethical failures comes the terrible explosion in the laboratory where Noakes was working in secret. He is blinded by the accident—permanently, he thinks. Harassed by his sufferings—more particularly by his spiritual sufferings—he makes his confessions to Mr. Maxineff and Miss Hallam, and looks despairingly toward the empty future. The story closes with the physician's hope that the loss of his sight is after all but temporary. As we end our reading and view the events in retrospect, we are conscious of having seen the various threads of interest woven into a complete and unified design.
Again, the principles of plot structure are clearly seen quietly creating their unified impression in A Sea Change, one of Alice Brown's homely stories.[2] Cynthia Miller, a New England housewife, had lived for years her life of dull routine in an isolated mountain farm eight miles from the nearest village. Her husband, Timothy, 'was a son of the soil, made out of the earth, and not many generations removed from that maternity.' Cynthia gradually comes to despise her life and her husband's crude carelessness—exemplified by his habitual animal aura and his newly-greased boots by the open oven door. With little ado, but with grim determination, she leaves him and goes to the sea-side home of her sister Frances. Cynthia is taken ill, but is at length cured by the kindly village doctor and the silent ministrations of the neighboring sea. Timothy, changed by the sudden departure of his wife and the opportunity for introspection that his lonely life now brings him, shakes off a bit of his earthiness and goes, after several weeks, to find his wife. We listen to the brief reconciliation and see Timothy begin to breathe in
