There have been a number of examples of moral tales in modern literature. Hawthorne's "Ambitious Guest" is one. "Lady Eleanor's Mantle" is another, though it is also a legend; for a moral narrative, just as an occasional narrative, may be of any type the author chooses. "Murad the Unlucky" by Maria Edgeworth is the Oriental wonder tale turned didactic. What makes this or that a story with a moral is the author's obvious concern about the lesson he means to teach. His narrative is nothing in itself: it is what it is because of the author's purpose. [Stowe] Doubtless the most widely influential moral story ever written is "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is a striking example of how much more powerful is concrete narrative than abstract argument. The Americans were ready for the sermon, but they never would have listened to it from the pages of a controversial tract. A story, they took to their heads and their hearts. It is the fate of moral narratives of this sort, however, to be for the time only; and seldom do any rise to the plane of real literature. "Rasselas" has endured partly because of the fame of its great author, and partly because of its high and true pessimism. Readers naturally like pessimism, and when it is of this good, philosophic sort, they feel justified in their taste. [Johnson and Voltaire] The theme is Johnson's favorite topic--the vanity of human wishes, the futility of the quest for happiness. Voltaire's "Candide," which came out in France two weeks before "Rasselas," is on the same topic with practically the same moral. But Voltaire was an agnostic and a cynic, while Johnson was a most conventional pietist. Addison and Steele as well as Johnson included didactic stories in their periodicals. [Tolstoy, Cervantes] Count Tolstoy, in his desire to help his countrymen, has written many parables, allegories, and moral tales. They are read by foreigners because of the pictures of Russian life. So are Cervantes's "Novelas Ejemplares" read for their fresh and spritely character-pictures of Andalusia. They are instructive moral tales, as their name indicates and as their author very definitely asserted. So idiomatic, spirited, and graceful are they that, though the oldest stories of their class in Spanish literature, they are without successful rivals. An exercise in this kind of narrative surely will not hurt you, and you may get some benefit from it, even if the chance reader should not like your preaching. Try, however, to make the story interesting in itself and to have the moral seem to grow naturally out of the action, rather than the action out of the moral. Avoid platitudes, and reveal the customs and manners of your people so faithfully that the student of social science might use your narrative for data. =Jeannot and Colin=