d story-books in childhood, not for eloquence
or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident."
For the writer who works from the outside in, it is entirely possible
to develop from "some quality of the brute incident" a narrative that
shall be not only stirring in its propulsion of events but also
profound in its significance of elemental truth.

=The Narrative of Character.=--The method of working from the inside
out--of using a subjective sense of character as the initial factor in
the development of a narrative--is wonderfully exemplified in the work
of Ivan Turgenieff; and the method is very clearly explained in Henry
James' intimate essay on the great Russian master. Henry James
remarks: "The germ of a story, with him, was never an affair of
plot--that was the last thing he thought of: it was the representation
of certain persons. The first form in which a tale appeared to him was
as the figure of an individual, or a combination of individuals, whom
he wished to see in action, being sure that such people must do
something very special and interesting. They stood before him
definite, vivid, and he wished to know, and to show, as much as
possible of their nature. The first thing was to make clear to himself
what he did know, to begin with; and to this end he wrote out a sort
of biography of each of his characters, and everything that they had
done and that had happened to them up to the opening of the story. He
had their _dossier_, as the French say, and as the police has of that
of every conspicuous criminal. With this material in his hand he was
able to proceed; the story all lay in the question, What shall I make
them do? He always made them do things that showed them completely;
but, as he said, the defect of his manner and the reproach that was
made him was his want of 'architecture'--in other words, of
composition. The great thing, of course, is to have architecture as
well as precious material, as Walter Scott had them, as Balzac had
them. If one reads Turgenieff's stories with the knowledge that they
were composed--or rather that they came into being--in this way, one
can trace the process in every line. Story, in the conventional sense
of the word--a fable constructed, like Wordsworth's phantom, 'to
startle and waylay'--there is as little as possible. The thing
consists of the motions of a group of selected creatures, which are
not the result of a preconceived action, but a consequence o