esult. He makes life more
interesting by making it more intelligible; and he does this mainly by
his power of construction.

=Elementary Narrative.=--The simplest of all structures for a
narrative is a straightway arrangement of events along a single strand
of causation. In such a narrative, the first event is the direct cause
of the second, the second of the third, the third of the fourth, and
so on to the culmination of the series. This very simple structure is
exhibited in many of the tales which have come down to us from early
centuries. It is frequently employed in the "Gesta Romanorum," and
scarcely less frequently in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio. It has the
advantage of being completely logical and entirely direct. But we
feel, in reading stories so constructed, that the method of
simplification has been carried too far, and that simplicity has
therefore ceased to be an excellence. Such a story is in this way
misrepresentative of life:--it fails utterly to suggest "the welter of
impressions which life presents," the sudden kaleidoscopic shifts of
actual life from one series of events to another, and the consequent
intricacy and apparent chaos of life's successive happenings. The
structure is too straightforward, too direct, too unwavering and
unhesitant.

=Positive and Negative Events.=--The simplest way to introduce the
element of hesitance and wavering, and thereby make the story more
truly suggestive of the intricate variety of life, is to interrupt the
series by the introduction of events whose apparent tendency is to
hinder its progress, and in this way emphasize the ultimate triumph of
the series in attaining its predestined culmination. Such events are
not extraneous; because, although they tend directly to dispute the
progress of the series, they tend also indirectly to further it
through their failure to arrest it. The events in any skilfully
selected narrative may, therefore, be divided into two classes: events
direct or positive, and events indirect or negative. By a direct, or
positive, event is meant one whose immediate tendency is to aid the
progress of the series toward its predetermined objective point; and
by an indirect, or negative, event is meant one whose immediate
tendency is to thwart this predetermined outcome. It would be an easy
matter, for example, in examining "Pilgrim's Progress," to class as
positive those events which directly further the advance of Christian
toward the Celestial