Art in Short Story Narration; A Practical Treatise (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913. Excerpt: ... The beginning of the story must con-tain some of the climax's vitality; the end of the story closes the inci-dent that called it into being. CHAPTER XIX A Study In Analysis (NOTE: While the following story may have many glaring defects, yet there are points in its narration that readily lend themselves to illuminative illustration. It is a story to which the author lays no claim to originality in plot conception. The shorter portions of the story, that are referred to in the parenthesized notes, are in italics. Furthermore, this story was written and published more than a year before this book was conceived. It is suggested that the story be read thru once, ignoring the italicised notes, if full analytical value is to be gleaned from it. SACRIFICE By HENRY ALBERT PHILLIPS. PRINCE ACHILGAR had tasted all the delights of the Orient--the Orient; the lap, the bosom, the mother of luxury. The sweetest spices and the costliest perfumes had begun to grow stale in his nostrils, the most luscious fruits sour in his mouth; the rarest ointments chafed his skin; and women--had he not the most envied harem in all India? Had he not the far-famed Ourvasi to beguile the ennui of domestic existence? There was a time when the splendor of Ourvasi the Glorious could make the dullness of a hundred other wives a tolerable necessity. But, alas Even Ourvasi had begun to fade in his sated eyes. The core of life had indeed become hollow . (This story was written with perhaps deliberate negligence, the writer having endeavored to attain true human interest and universal heart interest and to induce atmosphere by means of symbolic suggestion, without verifying geographical, historical or ethnological data.) Prince Achilgar, the Hindu sybarite, had taken account only of the fleeting...