ough which they are moving
to their ultimate result. He makes life more interesting by making
it more intelligible; and he does this mainly by his power of
construction.

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.

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
City, and t