ng together the details that arouse a glow
of satisfaction.

=3. The Character Interest.=--We can hardly have any vital interest in a
story apart from an interest in the characters. It is because things
happen to them, because we are glad of their good fortune or
apprehensive of evil for them, that the incidents in their succession
gain importance in our emotions. We are concerned with things that
affect our lives, and secondarily with things that affect the lives of
others, since what touches the fortunes of others is but a part of that
complex web of destiny and environment in which our own lives are
enmeshed. In the story it is not so true as in the drama that, for the
going out of our sympathies toward the hero or the heroine, there should
be other contrasting characters; but a story gains color and movement
from having a variety of individualities. Especially if the story is one
of action, definite sympathies are heightened when they are accompanied
by emotional antagonisms. In "The Master of Ballantrae," we come to take
sides with Henry Durrie almost wholly through having found his rival,
the Master, so black a monster. Such establishment of a common bond of
interest between us and the character with whom our sympathies are to be
engaged is a most effective means of holding us to a personal
involvement in the development of the plot. There must not be too many
characters shown, the relations between them must not be too various or
too complexly conflicting, but where the interplay of feeling and
clashing motives is not too hard to grasp, a variety of characters gives
life and warmth of human interest to a story.

=4. Uses of Description.=--Inasmuch as there are other interests in our
lives than those which are established by our relations with our
fellows, interests connected with the material world about us, any
narrative will probably have occasion to include some description. It
may be necessary merely as an aid to our understanding of some of the
details upon which the plot turns, it may help us to realize the
personalities of the characters, and it is often useful in creating
background and atmosphere, giving us some of the feelings of those with
whom the story deals as they look upon the beauty, or the gray dullness,
of the changing panorama of their lives. Stevenson's description of the
"old sea-dog" in "Treasure Island" is an excellent illustration of the
effectiveness of a few lines of description in mak