42. The Charm of Oil-Heaters. 43. The Coquetry of Gift Shops. 44. The Passing of the Hitching Post. 45. Names One Might Wish to Have Had. 46. Hall Bedrooms. 47. The Lure of Historic Tablets. 48. The Futility of Diaries. 49. Squeaking Boards at Midnight. 50. The Caste of Letter Heads. NATURE 1. Walking in the Rain. 2. Skylines. 3. The Personified Trees of Childhood. 4. Coffee in the Woods. 5. The Psychology of Hens. 6. The Humanity of Barnyards. 7. The Smell of Spring. 8. The Perfume of Bonfires. 9. The Sounds of Running Water. 10. Tracks in the Snow. 11. The Spectrum of Autumn. 12. The Mellowness of Gardens. 13. The Clamor of the Silent Stretches. 14. The Innocent Joy of Not Knowing the Birds. 15. The Rigors of the Sleeping Porch. 16. Inspiration of Mountain-tops. 17. Noises on Cold Winter Nights. 18. Cherries or Robins? 19. The Airedale Pal. 20. Snakes I Have Never Met. 21. The Exhilaration of Winds. 22. Spring Fever. 23. The Philosophy of Campfires. 24. Birds in a City Yard. 25. The Majesty of Thunderstorms. 26. The Music of Snow Water. 27. Hedges. 28. Mountain Springs. 29. The Deep Woods. 30. Summer Clouds. 31. The Companionable Birds. 32. The Dignity of Crows. 33. Trout Pools. 34. Muskrat Trails. 85. The First Flowers of Spring. 40. The Challenge of Crags and Ledges. 42. Apple Blossom Time. 43. The Majesty of Rivers. 44. Old Orchards. 45. Dried Herbs. 46. Friendly Roadside Bushes. 47. The Exultant Leap of Waterfalls. 48. The Wind in Hemlock, Pine, and Spruce. 49. Tree Houses. 50. The Collection of Pressed Flowers. CHAPTER VIII EXPOSITORY BIOGRAPHY BIOGRAPHY is of three kinds. First there is the purely dramatic, such as we find in the plays of Shakespeare, Barrie, and others, and often in novels of the more dramatic kind, which sets the subject to marching up and down before our eyes, with the gestures and the speech of life. Such biography sometimes covers a whole life, more often only a fraction from which we are to judge of the whole. From this kind of biography we draw our own conclusions of the hero; the producer sweeps aside the curtain, displays his people, bows, and leaves us to our comment. This is a most stimulating form of writing. The reader vicariously treads the Roman Forum, or fights under the banner of the great Alfred, or perhaps jostles in the surge of politics, or dreams an artist's dream, or even performs the humble chores of a lonely farmhouse. The personalities may never have lived except in the writer's brain, yet who that has read of Colonel Newcome ever lets fade from his list of friends that delightful gentleman? Who that has once met Falstaff forgets the roaring, jolly old knave? Stevenson gave witness that almost more than from any one else his courage and good cheer in dark days had caught fire from the personality of Shakespeare's heroine Rosalind. If these persons of the imagination can stimulate, how much more ought the subjects of the other two forms of biography to fire the brain, for they are usually taken from real life, are people who have faced the actual problems such as the reader is meeting, people who have perhaps flamed in a glorious career from birth to death or perhaps have gone quietly all their days. The second form of biography is purely analytical. It watches its subject, fol lows him through life, and only after this study sets down its words, which aim to state for the reader the meaning of the life. Such biography is illustrated in the brief analyses of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Hardy on page 148. Here the author is the logical thinker who draws the conclusions of careful meditation and says: such was the significance of this man, this woman. The third kind of biography, the expository, the kind with which we are here concerned, attempts to combine the other two, hopes to present the pageant of life which the hero lived, and especially to make an estimate of its importance, its significance. Some novels approach this form when the author stops, as Thackeray often does, to comment on the meaning of his people and their deeds. This kind of biography attempts to accomplish what Carlyle thought should be attempted, the ability to say, “There is my hero, there is the physiognomy and meaning of his appearance and transit on this earth; such was he by nature, so did the world act on him, so he on the world, with such result and significance for himself and us.” The Problem The primary object of expository biography is so to build up before the reader's eyes the figure of the hero, so to cast against the background of life the warm personality, so to recreate the lineaments and so to give perspective to the whole that the reader will know the hero, will be able to grasp his hand as a fellow human being with the game of life to play, and will be aware of the significance of the personality to his times and to the reader himself. To paint the man is the pleasurable adventure before the writer. Sir Christopher Wren bade us, if we wished a memorial of him, to "look around" upon the arches and the high dim places of his cathedral. So the writer of expository biography must plant himself in the deeds and desires of his hero, must gaze stead |