ter will shine forth much more brightly
when he overrules the objection. He does so in the same words he had
used in the first moment of emotion: "For this thy brother was dead,
and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." These beautiful
words, which now receive the emphasis of iteration as well as the
emphasis of terminal position, sum up and complete the entire
preestablished design.

This story, which contains only five hundred words, is a little
masterpiece of structure. It embodies a narrative theme of profound
human import; it exhibits three characters so clearly and completely
drawn that the reader knows them better than he knows many a hero of a
lengthy novel; and it displays an absolute adjustment between economy
and emphasis in its succinct yet touching train of incidents.
Furthermore, it is also, in the English version of the King James
translators, a little masterpiece of style. The words are simple,
homely, and direct. Most of them are of Saxon origin, and the
majority are monosyllabic. Less than half a dozen words in the entire
narrative contain more than two syllables. And yet they are set so
delicately together that they fall into rhythms potent with emotional
effect. How much the story gains from this mastery of prose may be
felt at once by comparing with the King James version parallel
passages from the standard French Bible. The English monosyllabic
refrain, with its touching balance of rhythm, loses nearly all of its
esthetic effect in the French translation: "_Car mon fils, que voici,
etait mort, mais il est ressuscite; il etait perdu, mais il est
retrouve._" And that very moving sentence about the elder son, "And he
was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out and
entreated him," becomes in the French Bible, "_Mais il se mit en
colere, et ne voulut point entrer; et son pere etant sorti, le priait
d'entrer._" No especial nicety of ear is necessary to notice that the
first is greatly written, and the second is not.

=Style Essential to the Short-Story.=--And this leads us to the
general consideration that even a perfectly constructed story will
fail of the uttermost effect unless it be at all points adequately
written. After Poe had, with his intellect, outlined step by step
the structure of "Ligeia," he was obliged to confront a further
problem,--the problem of writing the story with the thrilling and
enthralling harmony of that low, musical language which haunts us
like the