On the basis of form and of the attitude of the teller, narratives of actual events fall into three groups. The first set has five types: incident, anecdote, eye-witness account, traveler's sketch, and the tale of actual adventure. The second set includes journal and diary, autobiography and memoirs, biography. The third set is composed of annals, and chronicles and true relations. Instead of naming these sets, we might describe them thus: The first is made up of particular accounts of the doings of the writer and others in chance groups; the second, of more-or-less extended accounts of the sayings and doings of individual personages who for the time are important and either write about themselves or are written about; the third, of impersonal accounts of the doings of larger or smaller sections of mankind as units. Of course, the types fade into one another, and it is only in analyzing that a person would draw a hard and fast line between any two of them; but it is permissible to draw this line for the convenience of study and discussion. After an investigator has learned all the kinds, he may classify a given story into one or the other group according to the predominating characteristics, or he may make a group of narratives of mixed kinds, and consider the various elements. If he is trying, however, to write also, as well as to study according to the suggestions of this book, it would be a good plan for him to endeavor to produce at each attempt a rather more than less pure example of the type under consideration, so as to get as a result not only an interesting narrative, but a working model either for criticism or further production. For a person to have studied carefully an analysis of a type, to have read a distinct literary example of it, and to have attempted to put together a narrative that contains the essential elements, ought to mean that he has in his possession a piece of knowledge that will be valuable to him all his life, irrespective of any purely artistic quality of his achievement. That quality will probably be present much more surely than he at first expects; for a large part of the excellence of a piece of literature results from definite knowledge on the part of the writer, a clear aim to produce a particular kind of composition, and an indefatigable perseverance in revision of details. By emphasis on knowledge and work one would not preclude inspiration. Indeed, one would thereby court it; for, as we all know, it comes usually only to the expert and patient toiler. Even Robert Burns labored long over his reputedly spontaneous songs. The thought came to him often at the plough, it is true; but he confesses that afterwards he spent many hours polishing his lines. PART I NARRATIVES OF IMAGINARY EVENTS TYPES OF PROSE NARRATIVES CHAPTER I THE PRIMITIVE-RELIGIOUS GROUP