and beast. But, believe me, it does apply even to those. For the
transmittable thing in a story is the identifying essence, the
characterising savour, the peculiar quality and point of view of the
humour, pathos, or interest. Every tale which claims a place in good
fiction has this identifying savour and quality, each different from every
other. The laugh which echoes one of Seumas McManus's rigmaroles is not
the chuckle which follows one of Joel Chandler Harris's anecdotes; the
gentle sadness of an Andersen allegory is not the heart-searching tragedy
of a tale from the Greek; nor is any one story of an author just like any
other of the same making. Each has its personal likeness, its facial
expression, as it were.

And the mind must be sensitised to these differences. No one can tell
stories well who has not a keen and just feeling of such emotional values.

A positive and a negative injunction depend on this premise,--the
positive, cultivate your feeling, striving toward increasingly just
appreciation; the negative, never tell a story you do not feel.

Fortunately, the number and range of stories one can appreciate grow with
cultivation; but it is the part of wisdom not to step outside the range at
any stage of its growth.

I feel the more inclined to emphasise this caution because I once had a
rather embarrassing and pointed proof of its desirability,--which I relate
for the enlightening of the reader.

There is a certain nonsense tale which a friend used to tell with such
effect that her hearers became helpless with laughter, but which for some
reason never seemed funny to me. I could not laugh at it. But my friend