uggest an action appropriate to itself.
But it may do more than that. In certain special instances the setting
may not only suggest, but may even cause, the action, and remain the
deciding factor in determining its course. This is the case, for
example, in Mr. Kipling's story, "At the End of the Passage," which
opens thus:--

"Four men, each entitled to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,' sat at a table playing whist. The thermometer marked--for
them--one hundred and one degrees of heat. The room was darkened till
it was only just possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and the
very white faces of the players. A tattered, rotten punkah of
whitewashed calico was puddling the hot air and whining dolefully at
each stroke. Outside lay gloom of a November day in London. There was
neither sky, sun, nor horizon--nothing but a brown purple haze of
heat. It was as though the earth were dying of apoplexy.

"From time to time clouds of tawny dust rose from the ground without
wind or warning, flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of
the parched trees, and came down again. Then a whirling dust-devil
would scutter across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall
outward, though there was nothing to check its flight save a long low
line of piled railway-sleepers white with the dust, a cluster of huts
made of mud, condemned rails, and canvas, and the one squat
four-roomed bungalow that belonged to the assistant engineer in charge
of a section of the Gaudhari State Line then under construction."

The terrible tale that follows could happen only as a result of the
fearful loneliness and, more especially, the maddening heat of such a
place as is described in these opening paragraphs. The setting in this
story causes and determines the action.

=2. Setting as an Influence on Character.=--But in many other tales by
recent writers the setting is used not so much to determine the action
as to influence and mold the characters; and when employed for this
purpose, it becomes expressive of one of the most momentous truths of
human life. For what a man _is_ at any period of his existence is
largely the result of the interaction of two forces,--namely, the
innate tendencies of his nature and the shaping power of his
environment. George Meredith, and more especially Mr. Thomas Hardy,
therefore devote a great deal of attention to setting as an influence
on character. Consider, for example, the following brief pa