Practical English Composition Part 8

THRILLERS

"'Tis strange, but true; for truth is always strange, Stranger than fiction."

BYRON.

I. a.s.signments

1. Relate the most exciting adventure that has occurred to you. Use the third person. Reporters usually are not allowed to use the p.r.o.noun "I."

2. Relate the most exciting adventure that has befallen any person whom you personally know well enough to interview on the subject.

3. If you can obtain material in neither of the foregoing ways, get a story from the movies, after the manner suggested in the following dispatch:

TEACH REPORTING BY "MOVIES"

_Journalism Instructors at Columbia Use Films to Develop Students' Faculty of Observation._

Reporters' "copy" telling in graphic style of the Balkan War poured into the "city room" of the newspaper plant at the Columbia University School of Journalism yesterday. The reason was that moving pictures had been adopted as a means of giving to the students an opportunity to exercise their powers of observation and description in such a fas.h.i.+on as would be required of them in real newspaper work.

The idea of using a moving picture machine to train future newspaper reporters in accuracy of observation was originated by Professor Walter B. Pitkin, and was approved immediately by Dr.

Talcott Williams, director of the school. Dr. C. E. Lower, instructor in English, is the official operator, but this work will probably be given later to a student.

4. A last resort is literature. In Stevenson, Poe, or Conan Doyle, you can probably find a story that can be translated into a sufficiently thrilling newspaper dispatch.

II. Models

I

Colonel Folque, commander of a division of artillery at the front, recently needed a few men for a perilous mission, and called for volunteers. "Those who undertake this mission will perhaps never come back," he said, "and he who commands will be one of the first sons of France to die for his country in this war."

Volunteers were numerous. A young graduate of a polytechnic school asked for the honor of leading those who would undertake the mission. It was the son of Colonel Folque. The latter paled, but did not flinch.

His son did not come back.--_Boston Herald_.

II

Villagers in fear of death were scuttling out of little homes like rats driven from holes by flood.

One person in the village remained at her accustomed post and from time to time recorded into the mouth of a telephone receiver the progress of the conflict, while a French general at the other end of the wire listened. Presently her communications were interrupted. "A bomb has just fallen in this office," the girl called to the general. Then conversation ceased.

It is always that way with the telephone girl when tragedy stalks abroad and there is necessity to maintain communication with the outside world. The telephone girl of Etain may be lionized in lyric literature. She deserves it. The telephone girl of Etain may find brief mention in history. She deserves that much at least. And yet the telephone girl at Etain is but one of her kind the world over.--_Sioux City Journal_.

III. Oral Composition

1. Point out in each story the situation, the climax, and the _denouement_.

2. Discuss the meaning of "polytechnic," "lionized," "lyric."

3. Discuss the etymology of "volunteers," "mission," "graduate,"

"telephone," "literature."

4. Describe Etain.

5. Find in the models examples of ant.i.thesis, alliteration, and simile.

IV. Written Composition

1. Do not exceed the length of the models.

2. Be sure that your story is in three paragraphs, arranged thus: (1) Situation; (2) Climax; (3) Denouement.

3. Put your story in the form of a news article with a heading.

Don't forget the "Four W's."

V. Model

NEW YORK, November 21. The mystery of the disappearance of Mrs.

Pauline Edwards on November 18 was cleared up to-day. A party of police visited her home at 96 East Twenty-third St. at 9 A.M.

for the purpose of making a final examination of the premises.

They found Mr. Allan Edwards, her husband, at home, and compelled him to accompany them on their tour of inspection.

Careful scrutiny of all the rooms having failed to reveal any evidence of foul play, they were about to leave the cellar, which they had visited last, when Edwards, who was apparently under the influence of liquor or strong excitement, called their attention in abusive language to the construction of the walls, at the same time rapping heavily with a cane upon the bricks of the foundation of a chimney. His blows were answered by a sound from within the chimney. It seemed at first like the sobbing of a child and then swelled into an indescribable scream, howl, or shriek. The wall was broken down, revealing the b.l.o.o.d.y corpse of Mrs. Edwards. It stood erect. On its head sat a black cat.

On being arraigned before Police Justice O'Toole, Edwards confessed his guilt and told the story of his life. He comes from an excellent family, is a graduate of the University of Utopia, and had a thriving business until, several years ago, he became addicted to drink. During the summer of 1913, in a drunken frenzy, he gouged out one eye of a cat named Pluto, who had formerly been one of his pets. More recently he had destroyed this animal by hanging it with a clothes line in his yard. Remorse for this cruel deed caused him about two months ago to domesticate another cat, which was exactly like the first except that, whereas the first was entirely black, the second had on its breast a white spot, shaped like a gallows.

This circ.u.mstance, the fact that the animal had only one eye, and his own nervous condition soon made Edwards loathe and fear the new cat. On the morning of November 17, he and Mrs. Edwards went to the cellar to inspect their supply of coal. The cat followed them down the steep stairs and nearly overthrew Edwards, who thereupon seized an axe and would have slain it, had not Mrs. Edwards interposed. In his fury at being thwarted, he buried the axe in her skull. As the cellar had been newly plastered, he had no difficulty in removing some bricks from the chimney, in concealing the remains in its interior, and in repairing the wall in such a way that it did not differ in appearance from the rest of the cellar.

Dr. Felix Leo, Professor of Zoology at Columbia, on having these facts told him this morning, said he thought it unlikely that Cat Number Two was the same individual as Cat Number One, though the story of Androcles and the lion, if true, would indicate that animals of the feline species sometimes remember and reciprocate a kindness. "Why, then," said the doctor, solemnly closing one eye, "may we not suppose that a cat would have the will and the intelligence to revenge an injury?"

The theory of Edwards, who is now confined in a padded cell in the Tombs, is different. He maintains that the two cats are one and the same, and that the body of the beast is occupied by that ubiquitous spirit who is variously known as Satan, Hornie, Cloots, Mephistopheles, Pluto, and Old Nick.

VI. a.n.a.lysis of Model

This story is simply a translation into newspaper English of Edgar Allen Poe's story ent.i.tled _The Black Cat_. Its three parts are as follows:

1. _Situation._ A man is converted by drink into such a beast that he first tortures and kills a pet and afterwards in his frenzy murders his wife, concealing her body in a chimney.

2. _Climax._ His crime is revealed by the wail of the cat, which he had supposed dead but had walled up with the corpse.

3. _Denouement._ He is to be executed.

Poe puts the _denouement_ first, the situation second, and the climax last, which is a common and effective method in tales of horror and mystery. The newspaper method is to put the climax first, the _denouement_ second, and the situation last. This arrangement, which is as old as Homer's _Odyssey_, is thus alluded to by Byron:

"Most epic poets plunge in _medias res_, (Horace makes this the heroic turnpike road), And then your hero tells, whene'er you please, What went before--by way of episode."