FullReads

In the winter of 1824 Lieutenant G—–, of the
United States Navy, with his beautiful wife and
child, embarked in a packet at Norfolk bound to
South Carolina.

So far so good. At least, here is a direct beginning. A family group is going somewhere. There is an implied promise that before they have traveled very far something of interest to the reader will happen to them. Sure enough, the packet runs into a storm and founders. As she is going down Lieutenant G—– puts his wife and baby into a lifeboat manned by sailors, and then–there being no room for him in the lifeboat–he remains behind upon the deck of the sinking vessel, while the lifeboat puts off for shore. A giant wave overturns the burdened cockleshell and he sees its passengers engulfed in the waters. Up to this point the chronicle has been what a chronicle should be. Perhaps the phraseology has been a trifle toploftical, and there are a few words in it long enough to run as serials, yet at any rate we are getting an effect in drama. But bear with me while I quote the next paragraph, just as I copied it down:

The wretched husband saw but too distinctly the
destruction of all he held dear. But here alas
and forever were shut off from him all sublunary
prospects. He fell upon the deck–powerless,
senseless, a corpse–the victim of a sublime
sensibility!

There’s language for you! How different it is from that historic passage when the crack of Little Sure Shot’s rifle rang out and another Redskin bit the dust. Nothing is said there about anybody having his sublunary prospects shut off; nothing about the Redskin becoming the victim of a sublime sensibility. In fifteen graphic words and in one sentence Little Sure Shot croaked him, and then with bated breath you moved on to the next paragraph, sure of finding in it yet more attractive casualties snappily narrated.

No, sir! In the nickul librury the author did not waste his time and yours telling you that an individual on becoming a corpse would simultaneously become powerless and senseless. He credited your intelligence for something. For contrast, take the immortal work entitled Deadwood Dick of Deadwood; or, The Picked Party; by Edward L. Wheeler, a copy of which has just come to my attention again nearly thirty years after the time of my first reading of it. Consider the opening paragraph:

The sun was just kissing the mountain tops that frowned
down upon Billy-Goat Gulch, and in the aforesaid mighty
seam in the face of mighty Nature the shadows of a Warm
June night were gathering rapidly.

The birds had mostly hushed their songs and flown to
their nests in the dismal lonely pines, and only the
tuneful twang of a well-played banjo aroused the
brooding quiet, save it be the shrill, croaking
screams of a crow, perched upon the top of a dead
pine, which rose from the nearly perpendicular
mountain side that retreated in the ascending from
the gulch bottom.

That, as I recall, was a powerfully long bit of description for a nickul librury, and having got it out of his system Mr. Wheeler wasted no more valuable space on the scenery. From this point on he gave you action–action with reason behind it and logic to it and the guaranty of a proper climax and a satisfactory conclusion to follow. Deadwood Dick marched many a flower-strewn mile through my young life, but to the best of my recollection he never shut off anybody’s sublunary prospects. If a party deserved killing Deadwood just naturally up and killed him, and the historian told about it in graphic yet straightforward terms of speech; and that was all there was to it, and that was all there should have been to it.