ing instance) to sum up with absolute finality the narrative
accomplishment of the chapter, or else, by vaguely foreshadowing the
subsequent progress of the story, to lure the reader to proceed.
The elder Dumas possessed in a remarkable degree the faculty of
so terminating one chapter as to allure the reader to an immediate
commencement of the next. He did this most frequently by introducing
a new thread of narrative in a phrase of the concluding sentence, and
thereby exciting the reader's curiosity to follow up the thread.

The expedient of emphasis by terminal and by initial position cannot,
of course, be applied without reservation to an entire novel. The
last chapter of a novel with a complicated plot is often of necessity
devoted to tying or untying minor knots in the straggling threads of
the general network. Therefore, the most emphatic place in an extended
narrative is not at the very end, but rather at the close of the
chapter which sets forth the culmination. Also, although many great
novels, like "The Scarlet Letter," have begun at an emphatic moment
in the plot, many others have opened slowly and have presented no
important material until the narrative was well under way. "The
Talisman" of Scott, "The Spy" of Fenimore Cooper, and many another
early nineteenth-century romance, began with a solitary horseman whom
the reader was forced to follow for several pages before anything
whatever happened. Latterly, however, novelists have learned from
writers of short-stories the art of opening emphatically with material
important to the plot.

Another means of emphasis in narrative is by proportion. More time and
more attention should be given to essential scenes than to matters
of subsidiary interest. The most important characters should be given
most to say and do; and the amount of attention devoted to the others
should be proportioned to their importance in the action. Becky Sharp
stands out sharply from the half a hundred other characters in "Vanity
Fair," because more time is devoted to her than to any of the others.
Similarly, in "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice," as we have noted in
the preceding chapter, the heroine is in each case emphasized by the
fact that she is set forth from a more intimate point of view than
the minor people in the story. It is wise, for the sake of emphasis
by proportion, to draw the major characters more completely and more
carefully than the minor; and much may therefore be said, on