is just in this way
that commonly event succeeds event in the daily life of every one. It
is only in the great passionate crises of existence that event treads
upon event in uninterrupted sequence of causation. And here is the
main formal difference between life as it actually happens and life as
it is artistically represented in history, biography, and fiction. _In
every art there are two steps; first, the selection of essentials, and
secondly, the arrangement of these essentials according to a pattern._
In the art of narration, events are first selected because they
suggest an essential logical relation to each other; and they are then
arranged along the lines of a pattern of causation. Let us compare
with the haphazard passage from Pepys a bit of narrative that is
artistically patterned. Here is the conclusion to Stevenson's story of
"Markheim." The hero, having slain a dealer in his shop on Christmas
day, spends a long time alone, ransacking the dealer's effects and
listening to the voice of conscience. He is interrupted by a ringing
of the door-bell. The dealer's maid has returned from holidaying.--

"He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to
himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was,
ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as a chance-medley--a scene of
defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on
the further side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in
the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned
by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer
swarmed into his mind as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more
broke out into impatient clamor.

"He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a
smile.

"'You had better go for the police,' said he: 'I have killed your
master.'"

The last sentence of this passage is an effect which is logically led
up to by many causes that are rapidly reviewed in the preceding
sentences. Stevenson has here patterned a passage of life along lines
of causation; he has employed the logical method of narration: but
Pepys, in the selection quoted, looked upon events with no narrative
sense whatever.

=The Narrative Sense.=--The narrative sense is, primarily, an ability
to trace an event back to its logical causes and to look forward to
its logical effects. It is the sense through which we realize, for
instance, that what happened at two o'cl