of human happenings as to give a sense of unity
and growth to a definite end. A story implies a connection of characters
and events so as to suggest a rounding out and completion, which, looked
back upon, shall satisfy man's desire to discover some meaning and
significance in what is called Life. A child begging at the mother's
knee for "the end of the story," before bedtime, really represents the
race; the instinct behind the request is a sound one. A story, then, has
a beginning, middle and end, and in the right hands is seen to have
proportion, organic cohesion and development. Its parts dovetail, and
what at first appeared to lack direction and connective significance
finally is seen to possess that wholeness which makes it a work of art.
A story, therefore, is not a chance medley of incidents and characters;
but an artistic texture so woven as to quicken our feeling that a
universe which often seems disordered and chance-wise is in reality
ordered and pre-arranged. Art in its story-making does this service for
life, even if life does not do it for us. And herein lies one of the
differences between art and life; art, as it were, going life one better
in this rearrangement of material.

Of the various ways referred to of telling a story, the play has its
distinctive method and characteristics, to separate it from the others.
The story is told on a stage, through the impersonation of character by
human beings; in word and action, assisted by scenery, the story is
unfolded. The drama (a term used doubly to mean plays in general or some
particular play) is distinguished from the other forms mentioned in
substituting dialogue and direct visualized action for the indirect
narration of fiction.

A play when printed differs also in certain ways; the persons of the
play are named apart from the text; the speakers are indicated by
writing their names before the speeches; the action is indicated in
parentheses, the name business being given to this supplementary
information, the same term that is used on the stage for all that lies
outside dialogue and scenery. And the whole play, as a rule, is
sub-divided into acts and often, especially in earlier drama, into
scenes, lesser divisions within the acts; these divisions being used for
purposes of better handling of the plot and exigencies of scene
shifting, as well as for agreeable breathing spaces for the audience.
The word scene, it may be added here, is used in English-speaki