Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

family who is away from home, or to a chum who has moved out of town. Write on letter paper and address the envelope correctly, so that you can send your letter after it has been criticized. (By the way, you are beyond the childish necessity of using ruled paper, are you not?) See if you can make this the most interesting and bestlooking letter you have ever written.

Be sure to use properly the pronoun forms listed above and to make each sentence really a sentence, capitalized and punctuated as such. Can you spell correctly the names of the days of the week, the months, and the states? If not, master them now.

PROBLEM XIII

TELLING A STORY VIVIDLY

EXERCISE 1

STUDYING A STORY VIVIDLY TOLD1

Everybody would be glad if he could make his own experiences real and interesting in the telling. The secret of doing so has already been suggested to you. Tell the little details just as they seemed to your own wide-awake senses. Below is given a vivid account of an interesting incident, an account of which will repay careful study. What details help to make it vivid? (Vivid is only another word for alive.) What words are especially well-chosen? This is taken from the story told by a refugee from the French territory occupied by the Germans. If you wish to read some stories written by the children themselves, see the Atlantic Monthly, March, 1918. You will be interested also in the account of how the schools of Rheims met in cellars or in barricaded rooms while the city was under bombardment, and how all the children escaped injury, even though some of the schoolrooms were struck. This account is given in the February, 1918, number of the Atlantic Monthly.

1 For vivid story-telling study also Kipling; for example, the fight of the snake and the mongoose in "Rikki-tikki-tavi," the battle of Mowgli's friends with the Monkey-People in "Kaa's Hunting," the night ride of little "Toomai of the Elephants," or fishing for halibut, in " Courageous" (pp. 52-53).

Captains

Of course these writers had unusually exciting events to tell, but even the most exciting event may be made dull by the dull or awkward narrator. How is this story planned?

[ocr errors]

The schools have kept on, you know; every teacher at her post, not a day missed (even when the town was bombarded). Every year the examinations have been set - they use old examination papers sent from Paris before the war and diplomas have been given. And besides that, at home we have tried our best to keep the life of our children what the life of French children ought to be. I remember last year, during the summer, Aunt Louise taught a group of children in our part of town to sing the "Marseillaise." The studio of my cousin Jean is at the back of the house and high up, so that she thought the children's voices could not be heard from the street. The Mayor heard of what she was doing, and sent word that he would like to hear them sing. The news spread around rapidly. When he arrived with the city council, coming in one by one, as though merely to make a call, they found the big studio full to overflowing with their fellow-citizens — the old men and women who are all the fellow-citizens left here. There must have been two or three hundred of them, the most representative people of the town, all in black, all so silent, so old and sad. The children were quite abashed by such an audience, and filed up on the little platform shyly—our poor, thin, shabby, white-faced children, fifty or sixty of them.

There was a pause, the children half afraid to begin, the rest of us thinking uneasily that we were running a great risk. Suppose the children's voices should be heard in the street, after all. Suppose the German police should enter and find us assembled thus. It would mean horrors and miseries for every family represented. The Mayor stood near the children to give them the signal to begin — and dared not. We were silent, our hearts beating fast. Then all at once the littlest ones began in their high, sweet treble those words that mean France, that mean liberty, that mean life itself to us:

"Allons, enfants de la Patrie!" they sang, tilting their heads back like little birds; and all the other children followed:

.९९

Against us floats the red flag of tyranny!"

We were on our feet in an instant. It was the first time that

any of us had heard it sung since since our men marched away. I began to tremble all over, so that I could hardly stand. Everyone there stared up at the children; everyone's face was deadly white to his lips.

The children sang on sang the chorus, sang the second stanza. When they began the third, "Sacred love of our fatherland, sustain our avenging arms!" the Mayor's old face grew livid. He whirled about to the audience, his white hair like a lion's mane, and with a gesture swept us all into the song.

९९

'Liberty, our adored liberty, fight for thy defenders!" There were three hundred voices shouting it out, the tears streaming down our cheeks. If a regiment of German guards had marched into the room, we would not have turned our heads. Nothing could have stopped us then. We were only a crowd of old men and defenseless women and children, but we were all that was left of France in our French town. DOROTHY CANFIELD, "The Refugee," in Home Fires in France"

EXERCISE 2

TELLING A STORY VIVIDLY

It is to be hoped that you have never had so terrifying an experience as those of children in northern France during the war; but probably you have at some time done or seen something exciting. Perhaps you yourself have performed before a distinguished audience. Perhaps you have even been through a fire, or have narrowly escaped drowning or being run over; perhaps you have saved somebody's life, or rescued a pet animal, or been caught in a terrific storm. Perhaps you helped to keep home fires in America burning.

Whatever it may be, you must first recall your experience in detail with great vividness, so as to make it vivid in words.

Choose the details and the individual characteristics of things to tell about, so that you will make others feel with you the excitement that you felt. You can do this best by remembering to tell how things looked and sounded and perhaps smelled or tasted to you. Plan carefully the order of details. Since this story may be a little longer than those you have been telling, you may break it into two or three paragraphs in your mind, if each will be as long as most of those in the story quoted above.

In telling your story be careful to pronounce well the short vowel sounds, which are often confused. Especially avoid saying git; this is one of the most illiterate mispronunciations ever uttered. Practice the following words :

[blocks in formation]

In class criticize each other's stories (and remember that criticize does not mean find fault with) according to the points suggested in the assignment; namely:

I. Vividness-due to definite details, appeal to the senses, well-chosen words.

2. Plan.

3. Beginning.

4. Oral presentation, especially accurate pronunciation. No faultfinding should be permitted unless it suggests definitely how to make improvements.

« AnteriorContinuar »