Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Mood Hixts What a man is, under ordinary circumstances, what his general feeling is toward nature, toward his fellow men, and toward the various ideals that govern life,?this is made known by the character hint. What a man's momentary feeling is, or what his particular attitude toward a given person is, is made known by the mood hint. Both kinds of hints are direct results, or effects, and it is the duty of the imagination to determine their causes. In one the cause is found to be the character of the person performing the act under consideration; in the other the cause is found to be his mood, or emotion. For example, the fact that Jonathan gathers nuts and piles them near the chipmunks' tree (page 29) has as its cause the character of the man. We know at once his love of nature, his kindness to all animals, his considerateness and thoughtfulness for his fellows. But the fact that he flattens his dog George on the ground with his big, heavy hands because it has burrowed into the chipmunks' nest, is not due directly to character. In fact, his character prompts him to perfect kindness to animals rather than to harshness with them. He flattens the dog because of his mood. He is annoyed that his pets should be disturbed, and he adopts this method of preventing a recurrence of the intrusion. His momentary impatience causes the act. Mood may be told directly, that is, declared, or it may bemade known by means of a hint. To say, "As the boy left his mother's room he was very angry" is to declare mood to say, "As the boy stamped out of his mother's room his face was flushed, and he slammed the door till the bric-a- brac rattled," is to make known mood by means of three hints. The former statement in no way appeals to the imagination of the reader, since, by tellin...