_Incidents_
Incident is at once the earliest and the commonest material for
narration which we encounter in our own experience. An average life
furnishes only a few great adventures, impressive climaxes, and
epoch-making events, but every day is filled with a multiplicity of
incidents, gay, pathetic, or illuminating, which actually furnish
most of our material for conversation, for letters, and for memories.
It has been said that the ability to write good narration is likely
to be measured by the ability to recognize and relate incidents well,
and it will be readily observed that most of the effectiveness of
great climaxes is due to the value of the incidents which lead up to
them.
Essentially, an incident is an unimportant happening, usually
unforeseen and not prepared for, an event which leaves behind it
little or no appreciable result. Obviously every life and every day
is full of such events, but the task of the writer is to recognize
the elements of humor, pathos, tragedy, or human interest which serve
to make certain incidents worthy to be remembered and retold. The
unseeing person goes home at the end of the day without a single
entertaining story to relate, while the man who worked beside him
may delight the whole dinner table with half a dozen incidents which
entirely failed to impress his unobservant friend.
The incidents given in this section might easily have been lost had
they not fallen under the observation of good story tellers, yet
each of them deserved to be preserved to entertain the reader with
the same touch of interest that the writer found in the experience.
Each of them presents a phase of human character, and pleases the
reader by humor, pathos, or some lesson in the livableness of life.
The following suggestions may aid the beginner:
1. Examine your memory for experiences which stand out clearly
although they neither were nor are of great importance.
2. Decide what events are associated with the most interesting
people you know; often some incident has had a large part in
forming your impression of these people; and sometimes incidents
take on interest because of the people who figure in them.
3. Begin as late in the story as you possibly can, using little or
no introductory explanation.
F. del P.
INCIDENTS FROM THE LIFE OF LORD FREDERICK HAMILTON
I must plead guilty to two episodes where my sole desire was to
avoid disappointment to others, and to prevent the reality falling
short of the expectation. One was in India. Barrackpore, the Viceroy
of India’s official country house, is justly celebrated for its
beautiful gardens. In these gardens every description of tropical
tree, shrub and flower grows luxuriantly. In a far-off corner
there is a splendid group of fan-bananas, otherwise known as the
“Traveller’s Palm.” Owing to the habit of growth of this tree, every
drop of rain or dew that falls on its broad, fan-shaped crown of
leaves is caught, and runs down the grooved stalks of the plant into
receptacles that cunning Nature has fashioned just where the stalk
meets the trunk. Even in the driest weather, these little natural
tanks will, if gashed with a knife, yield nearly a tumblerful of
pure sweet water, whence the popular name for the tree. A certain
dull M.P., on his travels, had come down to Barrackpore for Sunday,
and inquired eagerly whether there were any Travellers’ Trees either
in the park or the gardens there, as he had heard of them, but had
never yet seen one. We assured him that in the cool of the evening
we would show him quite a thicket of Travellers’ Trees. It occurred
to the Viceroy’s son and myself that it would be a pity should the
globe-trotting M.P.’s expectations not be realized, after the long
spell of drought we had had. So the two of us went off and carefully
filled up the natural reservoirs of some six fan-bananas with fresh
spring-water till they were brimful. Suddenly we had a simultaneous
inspiration, and returning to the house we fetched two bottles of
light claret, which we poured carefully into the natural cisterns of
two more trees, which we marked. Late in the afternoon we conducted
the M.P. to the grove of Travellers’ Trees, handed him a glass, and
made him gash the stem of one of them with his pen knife. Thanks to
our preparation it gushed water like one of the Trafalgar Square
fountains, and the touring legislator was able to satisfy himself
that it was good drinking-water. He had previously been making some
inquiries about so-called “Palm-wine,” which is merely the fermented
juice of the toddy-palm. We told him that some Travellers’ Palms
produced this wine, and with a slight exercise of ingenuity we
induced him to tap one of the trees we had doctored with claret.
Naturally, a crimson liquid spouted into his glass in response to the
thrust of his pen-knife, and after tasting it two or three times, he
reluctantly admitted that its flavour was not unlike that of red
wine. It ought to have been, considering that we had poured an entire
bottle of good sound claret into that tree. The ex-M.P. possibly
reflects now on the difficulties with which any attempts to introduce
“Pussyfoot” legislation into India would be confronted in a land
where some trees produce red wine spontaneously.
On another occasion I was going by sea from Calcutta to Ceylon. On
board the steamer there were a number of Americans, principally
ladies, connected, I think, with some missionary undertaking. When we
got within about a hundred miles of Ceylon, these American ladies all
began repeating to each other the verse of the well-known hymn:
“What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle,”
over and over again, until I loathed Bishop Heber for having written
the lines. They even asked the captain how far out to sea the spicy
breezes would be perceptible. I suddenly got an idea, and, going
below, I obtained from the steward half a dozen nutmegs and a handful
of cinnamon. I grated the nutmegs and pounded the cinnamon up,
and then, with one hand full of each, I went on deck, and walked
slowly up and down in front of the American tourists. Soon I heard
an ecstatic cry, “My dear, I distinctly smelt spice then!” Another
turn, and another jubilant exclamation: “It’s quite true about
the spicy breezes. I got a delicious whiff just then. Who would
have thought that they would have carried so far out to sea!” A
sceptical elderly gentleman was summoned from below, and he, after
a while, was reluctantly forced to avow that he, too, had noticed
the spicy fragrance. No wonder! when I had about a quarter of a
pound of grated nutmeg in one hand, and as much pounded cinnamon
in the other. Now these people will go on declaring to the end of
their lives that they smelt the spicy odours of Ceylon, a full
hundred miles out at sea, just as the travelling M.P. will assert
that a tree in India produces a very good imitation of red wine.
It is a nice point determining how far one is morally responsible
one-self for the unconscious falsehoods into which these people
have been betrayed. I should like to have had the advice of Mrs.
Fairchild, of the _Fairchild Family_ upon this delicate question.
I feel convinced that that estimable lady, with her inexhaustible
repertory of supplications, would instantly have recited by heart “a
prayer against the temptation to lead others into uttering untruths
unconsciously,” which would have met the situation adequately, for
not once in the book, when appealed to, did she fail to produce
a lengthy and elaborately worded petition, adapted to the most
unexpected emergencies, and I feel confident that her moral armoury
would have included a prayer against tendencies to “leg-pulling.”
From _The Days Before Yesterday_ by Lord
Frederick Hamilton. Copyright 1920, George H.
Doran Company, Publishers.
THE FIANCÉE
MARGUERITE AUDOUX
I was going back to Paris after a few days’ holiday. When I got to
the station the train was crowded. I peeped into every carriage,
hoping to find a place. There was one in the last carriage, but two
big baskets, out of which ducks and hens were peeping, filled the
seat. After a long moment’s hesitation, I decided to get in. I
apologized for disturbing the passengers, but a man in a blouse said:
“Wait a moment, mademoiselle; I’ll take the baskets down.”
And while I held the basket of fruit which he had on his knees, he
slipped the baskets with the ducks and hens under the seat. The ducks
did not like it, and told us so. The hens dropped their heads as
if they had been insulted, and the peasant’s wife talked to them,
calling them by their names.
When I was seated, and the ducks were quiet, the passenger opposite
me asked the peasant whether he was taking the birds to market.
“No, sir,” said the man. “I am taking them to my son, who is going to
be married the day after to-morrow.”
His face was beaming, and he looked around as if he wanted everybody
to know how happy he was. An old woman who was hunched up in the
corner among three pillows, and who filled double the space she
should occupy, began grumbling about peasants who took up such a lot
of room in the train.
The train started, and the passenger who had asked about the birds
was opening his newspaper, when the peasant said to him:
“My boy is in Paris. He is working in a shop, and he is going to
marry a young lady who is in a shop, too.”
The passenger let his open paper drop to his knees. He held it with
one hand and, leaning forward a little, asked:
“Is the fiancée pretty?”
“We do not know,” said the man. “We haven’t seen her yet.”
“Really?” said the passenger. “And if she were ugly, and you did not
like her?”
“That is one of the things that can always happen,” answered the
countryman. “But I think we shall like her, because our boy is too
fond of us to take an ugly wife.”
“Besides,” said the little woman next me, “if she pleases our Philip,
she will please us, too.”
She turned to me, and her gentle eyes were full of smiles. She had
a little, round, fresh face, and I could not believe that she was
the mother of a son who was old enough to marry. She wanted to know
whether I was going to Paris too, and when I said yes, the passenger
opposite began to joke.
“I should like to bet,” he said, “that this young lady is the
fiancée. She has come to meet her father--and mother-in-law, without
telling them who she is.”
Everybody looked at me, and I got very red. The countryman and his
wife said, together:
“We should be very pleased if it were true.”
I told them that it was not true, but the passenger reminded them
that I had walked up and down twice as if I were looking for
somebody, and that I had been a long time making up my mind to get
into that carriage.
All the other passengers laughed, and I explained as well as I could
that this was the only place I had found.
“Never mind,” said the countrywoman. “I shall be very happy if our
daughter-in-law is like you.”
“Yes,” said her husband. “I hope she will look like you.”
The passenger kept up his joke; he glanced at me maliciously and said
to the peasants:
“When you get to Paris you will see that I am not wrong. Your son
will say to you, ‘Here is my fiancée.’”
A little while afterward the countrywoman turned toward me, fumbled
in her basket, and pulled out a cake, saying that she had made it
herself that morning. I didn’t know how to refuse her, but I said I
had a bad cold and a touch of fever, and the cake went back into the
basket. Then she offered me a bunch of grapes, which I was obliged to
accept. And I had the greatest difficulty in preventing her husband
from going to get me something hot to drink when the train stopped.
As I looked at these good people, who were so anxious to love the
wife their son had chosen, I felt sorry that I was not to be their
daughter-in-law. I knew how sweet their affection would have been
to me. I had never known my parents, and had always lived among
strangers.
Every now and again I caught them staring at me.
When we arrived at the station in Paris I helped them lift their
baskets down, and showed them the way out. I moved a little away from
them as I saw a tall young man rush at them and hug them. He kissed
them over and over again, one after the other. They smiled and looked
very happy. They did not hear the porters shouting as they bumped
into them with the luggage.
I followed them to the gate. The son had passed one arm through the
handle of the basket with the hens, and thrown the other round his
mother’s waist. Like his father, he had happy eyes and a broad smile.
Outside it was nearly dark. I turned up the collar of my coat, and
I remained a few steps behind the happy old couple, while their son
went to look for a cab. The countryman stroked the head of a big hen
with spots of all colors, and said to his wife:
“If we had known that she was not our daughter-in-law, we might have
given her the spotted one.”
His wife stroked the spotted hen, too, and said: “Yes, if we had
known.”
She made a movement toward the crowd of people who were coming out of
the station, and, looking into the distance, said:
“She is going off with all those people.”
The son came back with a cab. He put his father and mother into it
and got up onto the box by the driver. He sat sideways so as not to
lose sight of them. He looked strong and gentle, and I thought, “His
fiancée is a happy girl.”
When the cab had disappeared I went slowly out into the streets. I
could not make up my mind to go back to my lonely little room. I was
twenty years old, and nobody had ever spoken of love to me.
Marguerite Audoux. From _Everybody’s Magazine_,
with the kind permission of the editors and of
the author.
JIM WOLF AND THE CATS
MARK TWAIN
It was back in those far-distant days--1848 or ’49--that Jim Wolf
came to us. He was from a hamlet thirty or forty miles back in the
country, and he brought all his native sweetnesses and gentlenesses
and simplicities with him. He was approaching seventeen, a grave
and slender lad, trustful, honest, honorable, a creature to love
and cling to. And he was incredibly bashful. He was with us a good
while, but he could never conquer that peculiarity; he could not be
at ease in the presence of any woman, not even in my good and gentle
mother’s; and as to speaking to any girl, it was wholly impossible.
He sat perfectly still, one day--there were ladies chatting in the
room--while a wasp up his leg stabbed him cruelly a dozen times; and
all the sign he gave was a slight wince for each stab and the tear of
torture in his eye. He was too bashful to move.
It is to this kind that untoward things happen. My sister gave a
“candy-pull” on a winter’s night. I was too young to be of the
company, and Jim was too diffident. I was sent up to bed early, and
Jim followed of his own motion. His room was in the new part of the
house and his window looked out on the roof of the L annex. That roof
was six inches deep in snow, and the snow had an ice crust upon it
which was as slick as glass. Out of the comb of the roof projected
a short chimney, a common resort for sentimental cats on moonlight
nights--and this was a moonlight night. Down at the eaves, below the
chimney, a canopy of dead vines spread away to some posts, making
a cozy shelter, and after an hour or two the rollicking crowd of
young ladies and gentlemen grouped themselves in its shade, with
their saucers of liquid and piping-hot candy disposed about them on
the frozen ground to cool. There was joyous chaffing and joking and
laughter--peal upon peal of it.
About this time a couple of old, disreputable tomcats got up on the
chimney and started a heated argument about something; also about
this time I gave up trying to get to sleep and went visiting to Jim’s
room. He was awake and fuming about the cats and their intolerable
yowling. I asked him, mockingly, why he didn’t climb out and drive
them away. He was nettled, and said over-boldly that for two cents he
_would_.
It was a rash remark and was probably repented of before it was
fairly out of his mouth. But it was too late--he was committed. I
knew him; and I knew he would rather break his neck than back down,
if I egged him on judiciously.
“O, of course you would! Who’s doubting it?”
It galled him, and he burst out, with sharp irritation, “Maybe _you_
doubt it!”
“I? Oh no! I shouldn’t think of such a thing. You are always doing
wonderful things, with your mouth.”
He was in a passion now. He snatched on his yarn socks and began to
raise the window, saying in a voice quivering with anger:
“_You_ think I dasn’t--you do! Think what you blame please. I don’t
care what you think. I’ll show you!”
The window made him rage; it wouldn’t stay up.
I said, “Never mind, I’ll hold it.”
Indeed, I would have done anything to help. I was only a boy and was
already in a radiant heaven of anticipation. He climbed carefully
out, clung to the window sill until his feet were safely placed,
then began to pick his perilous way on all-fours along the glassy
comb, a foot and a hand on each side of it. I believe I enjoy it now
as much as I did then: yet it is nearly fifty years ago. The frosty
breeze flapped his short shirt about his lean legs; the crystal roof
shone like polished marble in the intense glory of the moon; the
unconscious cats sat erect upon the chimney, alertly watching each
other, lashing their tails and pouring out their hollow grievances;
and slowly and cautiously Jim crept on, flapping as he went, the gay
and frolicsome young creatures under the vine canopy unaware, and
outraging these solemnities with their misplaced laughter. Every time
Jim slipped I had a hope; but always on he crept and disappointed it.
At last he was within reaching distance. He paused, raised himself
carefully up, measured his distance deliberately, then made a frantic
grab at the nearest cat--and missed it. Of course he lost his
balance. His heels flew up, he struck on his back, and like a rocket
he darted down the roof feet first, crashed through the dead vines,
and landed in a sitting position in fourteen saucers of red-hot
candy, in the midst of all that party--and dressed as _he_ was--this
lad who could not look a girl in the face with his clothes on. There
was a wild scramble and a storm of shrieks, and Jim fled up the
stairs, dripping broken crockery all the way.
From Mark Twain’s _Autobiography_. By permission
of Harper & Brothers, Publishers.
THE HUNTING TRIP
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
They ran down to the Club House the following Saturday afternoon; the
local stopping for a brief moment to drop them by the edge of a river
without a building in sight. Cousin Jim unlocked a padlocked boat,
and they rowed down stream two miles to a small shanty perched on the
bank above high water. It was gray dark when they arrived, and an
edged wind was searching deliberately across the marshes seeking whom
it might shiver. A faint lucent streak in the west was reflected here
and there on little pools among the marsh grasses and cat-tails. All
the world was flat, except for three cold and naked trees against the
sky.
Cousin Jim unlocked the shanty, fumbled about and produced a light.
“Here we are!” he cried cheerfully, “snug as a bug in a rug!” He
clattered open a small iron stove and began to fuss with kindlings.
Freeman looked about him with distaste. He had been kicking himself
ever since his rash acceptance. The affair had not one redeeming
feature: he doubted whether he had even made the desired impression
on Mattie. It was cold, it looked dirty, there were no feline
comforts whatever; and Freeman could see no point in going out on
that exposed bleak march for the sake of shooting at a few silly
ducks! However, he was in for it, and he had to go through with
it. He had no thought, however, of making the best of it. He much
preferred to look upon himself as an injured martyr deprived of the
essential comforts for inadequate reasons. The indulgence of this
point of view manifested itself externally in silence. But as Freeman
had never been what you would call chatty with Cousin Jim, nobody but
an expert would have detected anything unusual.
Cousin Jim apparently was no expert. He seemed full of spirits and
anticipation, and chattered away about directions of the wind and
northern flights and different “holes” very cheerfully as he fussed
about the iron stove. In a short time he announced supper; and
Freeman discovered he was supposed to consider ham and eggs and thick
slices of bread and butter and a cup of strong coffee an adequate
meal! Cousin Jim had cooked a dozen eggs and seemed mildly solicitous
that Freeman did not eat his six.
“You’ll need to stoke up,” he urged. “It’s going to be colder than
Billy-be-damned in the morning. I really ought to have brought some
pie,” he added.
After supper Cousin Jim occupied the time very happily--for
himself--in getting out and stowing in a boat innumerable wooden
ducks, and examining the strings and weights attached to them; in
arranging shotgun shells in a tin box; in rummaging out from untidy
corners various brush knives, shell extractors, paddles, punt poles,
and the like. Concerning each of these items he discoursed at length
and cheerfully. Finally, he dug up some disreputable old canvas
coats and rubber boots. Cousin Jim was supplying the whole outfit,
necessarily, including the guns.
“There!” he announced at last, turning a beaming face to his
unresponsive guest. “All set! Now we’d better turn in.”
Freeman stepped outside. The marsh was flat and black now; the wind
searched through his thin clothing, through his shrinking flesh to
his very bones. He came back shivering.
“Wind’s north,” remarked Cousin Jim, “it’s liable to turn cold by
morning. That’ll bring ’em in!”
The final affront of the occasion was when Freeman found that he was
to sleep between blankets without sheets. He had never done such a
thing in his life: furthermore, he had never heard of such a thing.
He doubted if it could be done. Every fastidious instinct shrank from
the harsh contact. He reflected resentfully that he would not be able
to sleep a wink. He hated the whole silly business. He began almost
to hate Cousin Jim; he was so exuberantly cheerful.
III
He was quite sure he hated Cousin Jim when the latter haled him forth
the following morning. Nobody had ever before in the world’s history
been up at such an hour--unless he had stayed up all night. The north
wind seemed to have fulfilled its promise. It was cold--or worse.
Freeman had revised his hatred of the sheetless blankets: they had
become friends. How he dreaded leaving this warm nest! Why you could
see your breath! What an ass he had been to leave his comfortable
quarters at home to undertake this crazy expedition. Sport!
Ham and eggs and thick bread and butter and coffee for breakfast.
Freeman, unaccustomed to eating at this hour, could hardly choke
any of it down. Cousin Jim made sandwiches, also of thick bread and
butter and ham and eggs, and wrapped them in newspapers. He had not
much to say but he was busy and cheerful and whistled. Freeman hated
anybody to be cheerful so early in the morning.
They put on thick garments and stepped out into the darkness.
Lord, it was cold! The sweaters and canvas coats turned the wind,
but the keen air nipped Freeman’s ears and fingers, and made the
inside of his nose feel positively raw. He took his place in the
boat and humped over in a dumb sort of endurance. Cousin Jim, quite
superfluously, warned him not to talk. He had no desire to talk. If
he had anything at all to say it was to curse himself for getting
into this uncomfortable fix.
Cousin Jim paddled for a time; then turned sharp to the right. After
a moment he laid aside the paddle and took up a long pole with which
he began to push strongly. Freeman could see nothing. He wondered how
Cousin Jim knew when to turn, and by what knowledge or instinct he
had so accurately hit the narrow channel through which they were now
making their way.
This wonder was the first break in his self-absorption. The next was
also a wonder; as to the fact that he was standing it after all. It
was too early for any sane man to be up, it was bitterly cold, his
position in the cranky duck boat was cramped and one of his feet had
gone to sleep: but it had not yet proved fatal. A very faint pride
stirred within him. These Arctic fellows became understandable.
Probably no one in the world’s history had ever been so cold and
miserable. But as long as he was in for it and had to go through with
it--and he was going through with it--he found it commendable that he
was doing so well. He was glad now he had inhibited a vigorous wail
the general awfulness of the situation had tempted him to utter.
Freeman had firmly made up his mind that he was going to endure the
experience; but never again! The entire day was going to be devoted
to endurance. Nevertheless, here was one thing that had broken in to
share his consciousness. Soon came another.
In the east a faint light had been slowly growing. It had not seemed
to affect the darkness, yet in some manner indeterminate gray objects
grew into visibility. The reed-grown banks of the channel through
which they were poling began to be dimly perceptible: there was a
glint on the water of tiny ponds to right and left: an horizon was
defined. This half-light increased. The ponds and waterways became
almost plain. One found himself in a world of multiplying details.
And from all about came splashings, quackings, the roar of rising
wings, the overhead whistle of departing wings. It seemed incredible
that one could not see their owners, they were so loud and so near,
and the light was by contrast with the draining night so strong.
Freeman, in spite of his determination to be miserable, felt the
stirrings of a faint excitement.
The boat turned into a pond. Cousin Jim dropped overboard one by one
his wooden ducks, then rushed the craft into the reeds. He busied
himself with the latter for a moment; upturned a box to sit on.
“Load your gun,” he instructed Freeman in a low voice. “We’re just
about in time.”
There ensued a period of waiting while the light grew. In that
period Freeman’s miseries returned on him. His watch told him it
was six o’clock: his body told him it was even colder than he had
thought; his anticipation showed him an interminable vista of minutes
to be passed one by one. He was entirely encased within his own shell.
Something sudden dragged him out. He had a startling impression of
the whistling rush of something swift in the air, of a bulk rising,
of two shattering impacts. The fact was a flock of ducks had come in
to the decoys; Cousin Jim had got to his feet; and had shot twice.
Now as he was opening the breech of his gun he spoke in his ordinary
voice.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” he was asking.
Freeman could not very well tell the whole truth and say he had not
shot because he had been suffering so cruelly. So he muttered a
half-truth about not having seen them. But the incident caused him
again to look outside himself.
He saw that the daylight had flooded the world: that the marsh
stretched away interminably brown; that the sky was gray streaked
with slate: that the little pond was ruffled by skurrying cats-paws
and that the wooden ducks were bobbing solemnly at the ends of
their lines. Then Cousin Jim produced a queer instrument of wood
and nickle, a little bigger than a cigar, and began to talk duck on
it. Freeman could see nothing, but from somewhere came a whistle of
wings, which died away. After a moment Cousin Jim stopped talking
duck and turned his face to Freeman.
“Mallards,” he said. “They’re wise old birds. You must have moved
your head when they were circling right above us. You’ve got to hold
absolutely rigid until they turn in over the decoys.”
He spoke kindly and cheerfully; but Freeman felt a touch of reproach.
Shortly Cousin Jim resumed talking duck. Freeman stared at the decoys
through the interstices of the reeds. Suddenly from nowhere another
flock materialized. They were low above the marsh, headed straight
for the blind, their wings set. The direction of flight was so
squarely toward the shooters that Freeman perceived with satisfaction
that no calculation would be required for the shot: he could just
hold right at them, like shooting at a paper on a fence. He had
handled a shotgun a very little, but he was not a hunter.
“Let ’em have it!” muttered Cousin Jim.
Freeman arose to his feet, prepared to pulverize the two leaders. The
instant the two men showed, the entire flight translated the momentum
of their horizontal approach into a climb straight up. It is what an
aeroplane does when it _zooms_. In addition every duck added his own
duck power to the effort. They “towered,” as sportsmen have it; and
until you have seen it you can never imagine how fast and how far a
duck can tower while you are winking an eye. Instead of being able
to shoot as he would at stationary targets, Freeman was flustered by
wildly scattering and escaping elusiveness. He banged away lustily,
and of course missed both barrels.
“Get any?” queried Cousin Jim, blowing the black powder smoke from
his gun.
“No: missed,” replied Freeman shortly. He had heard two lovely
splashes from Cousin’s Jim side of the flock.
“Too bad: better luck next time,” said the latter.
Now, as has been said, Freeman was no sort of a shot: he had never
had the practice to become so. But no youth ever likes to admit
himself a duffer at anything. Freeman began to glow with a dull
resentful anger at the situation; and with the anger began to grow a
determination. He would show them!
However, three more flocks came in, and Freeman showed nobody
anything. Twice he missed, and once he forgot to cock his gun! Those
were the days before hammerless pieces, of course. He tugged away at
the trigger until he felt black in the face. It was very mortifying
to a sensitive soul. Cousin Jim seemed to make nothing of these
catastrophes; killed his ducks with cheerful regularity; and seemed
to be having a good time. Freeman became actually bitter. The whole
thing was too silly for words.
A fourth flock came in, and _four_ splashes followed the roar of the
guns. Freeman had killed a pair!
“Good shot,” commented Cousin Jim. “Landed them nicely.” Something
happened inside Freeman; something analogous to hot sun on a misty
meadow, or a wind on a fog-bound sea. He had killed two ducks: and he
thought he knew just how he had killed them. You threw your aim at
the body, and then swung your muzzle up and pulled trigger just as
the head disappeared from view. He discovered in himself an intense
eagerness for the next lot to come in, so he could try again. The
blood was singing through his body. No longer did he feel cold or
disgruntled. Also he wanted to be chatty; which shows that those two
ducks had stirred Freeman up considerably. Minnie would not have
known her darling brother had she been able at that moment to see
his inner self accurately depicted in outward semblance. The latter
manifestation would have been that of a blithe and skiptious person
who would have worn his hat on one side of his head.
More ducks came in from time to time, and Freeman had a chance to
test his theories. It is only in romantic fiction that the hero wins
the football match or licks the champion or cops off the million
in Wall Street without knowing a thing about football, boxing, or
finance. The idea was perfect; but ducks seemed to have no notion of
regularity or standardization. They never acted the same way twice
running. Still, out of a good many shots he did scratch down a few.
One of the great compensations in life is the fact that the glow from
a successful shot lasts a poor marksman longer than it does a good
one. And a casual remark of Cousin Jim’s supplied the one missing
ingredient. After the fifth duck had fallen to Freeman’s lavish burnt
offering of black powder he said:
“Pity you haven’t your own gun. There’s nothing that throws a man off
worse than shooting a strange gun, is there?” He seemed to speak as
one expert to another.
Freeman’s imagination, turned agile by the necessity of making this
extraordinary slaughter quite theoretically perfect, seized upon the
thought. Of course: couldn’t expect him to do himself justice with a
strange gun! In fact, considering that he was shooting a strange gun,
he was doing rather remarkably well! It is to be doubted if there
were many other duck shots, shooting a strange gun, who could equal
this! This aforementioned imagination merely neglected as unimportant
the fact that any gun whatever would be strange to Freeman.
The flight slackened. There were long intervals when there were no
birds in the sky. Cousin Jim remarked that it was too dinged warm
for the best shooting. Two hours before Freeman would probably have
meditated killing Cousin Jim for making that remark.
“Yes,” he said now, wisely, “and it looked last night as though that
north wind would bring a cold snap.”
“Well, we’ll smoke and keep our weather eye open; and there’ll be
the afternoon flight, anyway,” was Cousin Jim’s decision. “It’s sort
of pretty out here on the marsh, anyway.”
They sat and smoked and ate relishingly the sandwiches made of
thick bread and butter and ham and eggs. Freeman assented to the
proposition that grub certainly tasted good out here. No one would
have known Freeman. In the contagion of Cousin Jim’s extreme youth
he had become quite a boy about it all. He followed up Cousin Jim’s
remark about the marsh being pretty by discovering all sorts of
compositions in the landscape. He pointed them out. This was a new
one on Cousin Jim. Freeman became absorbed in making him see the
various little pictures that could be composed by isolating certain
bits from the whole. The isolating had to be done with an eye for the
distribution of masses. Cousin Jim was vastly interested and could
not get over his astonishment.
“I’ve been coming down to this marsh off and on for near twenty-five
years,” said he, “and I’ve always thought it was pretty--it is sort
of wide and wild and lonesome--but I never thought it had so many
little pictures in it!”
“And colour,” supplemented Freeman. He somehow was as pleased as
punch over having impressed Cousin Jim, whose opinion yesterday had
been negligible. “What’s its colour?”
“Why, brown.”
“Turn your head upside down and look.”
Cousin Jim gravely inverted.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he cried.
“All kinds of colours, aren’t there? Lilac, and purple, and pearl,
and pink--all sorts.”
“It’s like magic,” said Cousin Jim. “How do you explain that?”
“Oh, it’s just that when you look at it upside down you eliminate
the form of things and see only the colour. Your attention is not
divided.”
“_Swish!_--_swish!_ A flock of swift teal had darted down and flashed
away again. Cousin Jim laughed.
“We better get on the job,” said he.
They stayed out until the early dusk, returning only just in time to
catch the local train back. In the smoking car Freeman was no longer
silent. In fact, he talked a blue streak; and his conversation was of
the shots he had made and why, and the shots he had not made and why
not. Of course a fellow shooting a strange gun----
IV
Freeman had promised Cousin Jim, and himself, that he would go duck
hunting again--and had meant it. This was in the first glow, but the
first glow died. The discomforts gradually came to be uppermost in
his mind. He began to look back on the excellence of his endurance
with a little wonder and considerable pride. But he shrank from its
repetition. There was no doubt that he had enjoyed the experience,
but unless fairly forced into it by circumstances he would never
voluntarily pay so much in feline comfort for that kind of enjoyment.
The unaccustomed struggle made it not worth while. He had always
overindulged his body, and now he could not fight it. Never did he
abandon the fiction that he wanted to go duck hunting again, but was
prevented by untoward circumstances from accepting the invitations;
and always he clung tenaciously to the prideful pose of one who
hunted ducks on incredibly cold mornings and made nothing of it. But
he did not go again.
Cousin Jim was sorry for this. Whenever Freeman’s name came up
for discussion Cousin Jim thenceforward took pains to say that he
was not so bad after all, if he would only give himself a chance.
Even when the occasion was in the nature of a praise meeting for
Freeman, Cousin Jim made this remark; which Freeman’s friends
resented as uncalled for. Nevertheless, somehow, Cousin Jim seemed to
consider Freeman’s mere existence required some sort of defense or
explanation, and he was always glad to offer it.
From _The Glory Hole_ by Stewart Edward White.
Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Company.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF INCIDENTS
The editors have found these additional selections very useful in
teaching the writing of incidents:
Byrne, Donn. _Messer Marco Polo_, Chapter I. The Century Company.
Goldsmith, Oliver. _The Vicar of Wakefield_, Chapter XIV, _Fresh
Mortifications_.
Hémon, Louis. _Maria Chapdelaine_, Chapter IX, _One Thousand Aves_.
The Macmillan Company.
Hudson, W. H. _Far Away and Long Ago_, Chapter III, _The Death of
an Old Dog_. E. P. Dutton & Company.
Wiggin, Kate Douglas. _A Child’s Journey with Dickens_ in _My
Garden of Memory_. Houghton Mifflin Company.