I would not for a moment lend the atmosphere of charlatanry, or of the
ultra-psychic, to the wholesome and vivid art of story-telling. But I
would, if possible, help the teacher to realise how largely success in
that art is a subjective and psychological matter, dependent on her
control of her own mood and her sense of direct, intimate communion with
the minds attending her. The "feel" of an audience,--that indescribable
sense of the composite human soul waiting on the initiative of your own,
the emotional currents interplaying along a medium so delicate that it
takes the baffling torture of an obstruction to reveal its
existence,--cannot be taught. But it can and does develop with use. And a
realisation of the immense latent power of strong desire and resolution
vitalises and disembarrasses the beginner.

That is, undoubtedly, rather an intangible beginning; it sets the root of
the matter somewhat in the realm of "spirits and influences." There are,
however, outward and visible means of arriving at results. Every art has
its technique. The art of story-telling, intensely personal and subjective
as it is, yet comes under the law sufficiently not to be a matter of sheer
"knack." It has its technique. The following suggestions are an attempt to
state what seem the foundation principles of that technique. The general
statements are deduced from many consecutive experiences; partly, too,
they are the results of introspective analysis, confirmed by observation.
They do not make up an exclusive body of rules, wholly adequate to produce
good work, of themselves; they do include, so far as my observation and
experience allow, the fundamental requisites of good work,--being the
qualities uniformly present in successful work of many story-tellers.

First of all, most fundamental of all, is a rule without which any other
would be but folly: _Know your story._