More examples of character hints

More examples of character hints

On a morning when the North River is full of floating ice a tug plows a great furrow in the hull of a crowded ferryboat. The boat being helpless because of paddles choked with ice, the danger is increased a hundred fold. Captain Joe, seeing the accident from his own forward deck, runs his tug up to the side of the ferryboat and leaps into the crush of white-faced women, shrieking children, cursing men, and crazy, struggling horses. Driving the frightened crowd to the side opposite the ragged hole, he vows that he will throw overboard the first man that stirs, and runs for the engine-room. He meets the engineer halfway up the ladder, compels him to return, and immediately begins to pile mattresses, blankets, clothing, cotton waste, bits of carpet, everything, into the splintered gap left by the tug ’ s cutwater. But all available material has been used and the water is still pouring in. Running his eye searchingly about the engine-room and finding nothing, he deliberately thrusts his own body into the yawning breach, holding himself steady with one arm outside, where freezes it and the floating ice gnaws off the flesh. An hour later the boat is safe in her slip, and a surgeon is caring for the unconscious man. Finally the color creeps back to his cheeks, the eyes half open, and the surgeon catches the whisper, " Wuz any of them babies hurt?"

Fiction? Impossible? A story-writer ’ s unrestrained im¬agination?

If you ask Mr. Smith, he will assure you that he draws from life, will give you his hero ’ s name, and will refer you to the files of the New York papers.

Merely to read of the incident, not only makes the blood run faster, but also arouses the imagination to an apprecia¬tion of the whole rounded character of the man.

But one more hint renders the picture still clearer. On a Sunday months afterwards Captain Joe is importuned to tell of this experience. ’ Ile would, but he ’ s most forgot. So many of these things turnin ’ up when a man ’ s bangin ’ round, it ’ s hard to keep track on ’ em. He wuz workin ’ on the Reliance at the time, and come to think on it, he ’ d found her log last week in his old sea-chest when he wuz huntin ’ some rubber cloth to patch his divin ’ suit. He guessed the story wuz all there. ’ The book is found. Turning the grimy pages with his thole-pin of a finger, he at last finds the entry. And what is it?

"January 30.'—'Left Jersey City 7 A. M. Ice running

''heavy. Captain Joe stopped leak in ferryboat."''

That is all. But how much of the man it suggests. And we feel absolutely certain that each of these acts came right from Captain Joe ’ s heart.

The statement has been made that the character hint is a tool used effectively by authors. That it is also used consciously is shown by this reply made by Mr. Smith when asked whether he chose these incidents deliberately, and, if so, why he chose them:

"You know I am by profession an engineer. I never put down a bridge foundation any more deliberately than I chose the incidents you refer to. I chose them because I wished to make known the character of a very dear friend of mine, and I felt that they suggest his character in such a way as to make it known better than I could tell it. When I use such incidents it is always with a definite purpose. For instance, in Caleb West ’ I wished to make known the delicate, refined, cultured—nature of Jack Hardy. So almost the firk thing he does in the story is to take a rose, as soon as he enters the room, from the vase on Sanford ’ s table and adjust it in his buttonhole."

The next example is drawn from Mr. -Rudyard Kipling ’ s "Captains Courageous." In this story Mr. Kipling aims to make us feel the meaning of the life of the fishermen on the Newfoundland Banks, and shows the effect of heroic treatment on the pampered, money-spoiled son of a self- made railroad king.

The story opens in the smoking-room of an Atlantic liner. The speakers are exchanging very uncomplimentary remarks about Harvey Cheyne, a fifteen-year-old boy who has made himself an unbearable nuisance ever since the hour of sailing. The door opens, and in walks the lad, the hero of the story. He begins:

"Say, it ’ s thick outside. You can hear the fish-boats squawking all around us. Say, would n ’ t it be great if we ran down one? ..."

He picked up some dice from a checker-board and began throw¬ing, right hand against left.

"Say, gen ’ elmen, this is deader ’ n mud. Can ’ t we make a game of poker between us?"

There was no answer, and he puffed his cigarette, swung his legs, and drummed on the table with rather dirty fingers. Then he pulled out a roll of bills as if to count them.

"How ’ s your mama this afternoon ? " a man asked. "I did n ’ t see her at lunch.

"In her state-room, I guess. She ’ s ’ most always sick on the ocean. I ’ m going to give the stewardess fifteen dollars for look¬ing after her. I don ’ t go down more ’ n I can avoid. It makes me feel mysterious to pass that butler ’ s-pantry place. Say, this is the first time I ’ ve been on the ocean."

"Oh, don ’ t apologize, Harvey."

"Who ’ s apologizing? This is the first time I ’ ve crossed the ocean, gen ’ elmen, and, except the first day, I have n ’ t been sick one little bit. No, sir!" He brought down his fist with a triumph¬ant bang, wetted his finger, and went on counting the bills.

"Oh, you ’ re a high-grade machine, with the writing in plain sight," the Philadelphian yawned. "You ’ 11 blossom into a credit to your country if you don ’ t take care."

"I know it. I ’ m an American—first, last, and all the time. I ’ ll show ’ em that when I strike Europe. Pff! My cig ’ s out. I can ’ t smoke the truck the steward sells. Any gen ’ elman got a real Turkish cig on him?"

A German offers him a skinny black cigar, a "Wheeling stogie," which he accepts, declaring "It would take more ’ n this to keel me over." Soon, however, he has occasion to seek the deck, where he doubles up at the extreme end, near the flag pole. Then a roll of the ship tilts him over the rail, and ’ a low, gray mother-wave tucks him under one arm and pulls him off to the leeward, the green closes over him, ’ and the next thing he knows he finds himself in a fishing boat on the Newfoundland Banks.

Returning to consciousness, he sees near him Dan, the son of Disco Troop, who is owner as well as captain of the schooner We ’ re Here of Gloucester. Dan gets him into his clothes and finally succeeds in persuading him to go on deck to see the captain. Here he makes such impossible demands and tells such amazing tales of his father ’ s wealth that the captain is convinced that his accident has affected his head. Nevertheless, as he is short of help, one man having gone overboard, he offers Harvey "ten an ’ a ha ’ af a month." The boy, however, continues to make himself so superlatively disagreeable that the bluff captain is corn-. paed to bring him to reason with a blow.

Mr. Kipling now deems it time to show us something good in this boy, and he makes him hunt up the captain and apologize for the way he has acted,—makes this child of millions, who never has felt the weight of a finger, humble himself before the ill-smelling fisherman who has knocked him down.

The purpose of this character hint is of course to show that somewhere in the boy is a seed of the common sense that has made his father a leader of men, a seed which, if properly nurtured, will make a man of him.

Harvey sees that there is nothing else to do, and during four months he washes pans and kettles, cleans and salts fish, scrubs deck,—in short, becomes acquainted with work.

What is the result?

When the We  ’ re Here gets back to Gloucester the wires tell a railway president on the Pacific coast that his son is not drowned. Then a misty-eyed father and a delirious mother race across a continent in a special train.

And the rescued son? He is unloading ship, but he asks for a day off, goes to Boston in blue jersey and rubber boots, and there in all the luxury of his mother ’ s own Pullman, although reeking with the fine full flavor of the codfish, he is welcomed by his father and cried over by his mother.

"I wonder your nervous system is n ’ t completely wrecked," said Mrs. Cheyne.

"What for mama? I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man."

That was too much for Mrs. Cheyne, who began to think of her visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas. She went to her state-room, and Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness.

"You can depend upon me to do everything I can for the crowd, Harve. They seem to be good men on your showing."

"Best in the fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester, ..

run the ’ Constance ’ over to Gloucester? Mama don ’ t look fit to be moved, any way, and we ’ re bound to finish cleaning out by to-morrow. . ..

"You mean you ’ 11 have to work to-morrow, then?"

"I told Troop I would. I ’ m on the scales. I ’ ve brought the tallies with me." He looked at the greasy notebook with an air of importance that made his father choke. "There is n ’ t but three—no—two ninety-four, or five quintal more by my reckoning."

"Hire a substitute," suggested Cheyne, to see what Harvey would say.

"Can ’ t, sir. I ’ m tally-man for the schooner. Troop says I ’ ve a better head for figures than Dan. Troop ’ s a mighty just man."

"Well, suppose I don ’ t move the ’ Constance ’ to-night, how ’ ll you fix it?"

Harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven. "Then I ’ ll sleep here till three and catch the four o ’ clock freight. They let us men from the fleet ride free as a rule."

"That ’ s a notion. But I think we can get the `Constance ’ round about as soon as your men ’ s freight. Better go to bed now."

The boy who ’ will catch the four o ’ clock freight ’ is not the same young gentleman that thought it would be great to run down a fish-boat. Perhaps, too, he is just as likely to ’ blossom into a credit to his country. ’

Exercise.

Consider the italicized portions in the following quotations, and determine what they suggest as character hints:

There at a board by tome and paper sat,

With two tame leopards crouch ’ d beside her throne, All beauty compass ’ d in a female form,

The Princess.—Tennyson in " The Princess."

she herself [ Lady Psyche ] Erect behind a desk of satin-wood.—Ibid.

''Brutus. ''Bear with me, good boy, I am much forgetful.

Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile, And touch thy instrument a strain or two?

''Lucius. ''Ay, my lord, an ’ t please you.

''I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing. Lucius. ''It is my duty, sir.

''Brutus. ''I should not urge thy duty past thy might;

I know young bloods look for a time of rest. ''Lucius. I ''have slept, my lord, already.

''Brutus. ''It was well done, and thou shalt sleep again;

I will not hold thee long: if I do live,

Lay ’ st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy, That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good night; I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee.

If thou d,ost nod, thou break ’ st thy instrument:

''.1 ’ 11 take it from thee; and, good boy, good night. Let me see, let me see; is not the leaf turn ’ d down''

Shakespeare in "Julius Ccesar:" iv. 3. 255-274.

I was a lad of fifteen when Burns came first to Edinburgh. . . . I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson ’ s, where there were several gentlemen of literary reputation. . . . Of course we youngsters sat silent, looked and listened. The only thing I remember which was remarkable in Burns ’ s manner, was the effect produced upon him by a print of Bunbury ’ s, representing a soldier lying dead in the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side,—on the other, his widow, with a child in her arms. . . . Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines (written beneath it) were: and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorn ’ s.

—Sir Walter Scott,

We were no sooner come to the Temple stairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir Roger, after having looked about him very atten¬tively, spied one with a wooden leg, and ''immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking toward it, "You must know," says Sir Roger, "I never make use of anybody to row me that has not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has been wounded in the queen ’ s service."—Addison in Sir Roger de Coverley at Vauxhall."''

Exercise.

''Study the following quotations. In each determine whose character is shown, what particular trait of character is made known, and what general character is suggested:''

Before the bombardment of the Danish forts in the Baltic, Nelson spent day after day, himself, on the exhausting service of sounding the channel.—Emerson in "English Traits."

Drawing his sword, he [ Pizzaro ] traced a line with it on the sand from east to west. Then, turning towards the south, "Friends and comrades!" he said, "on that side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south." So saying, he stepped across the line. He was followed by the brave pilot Ruiz; next by Perdo de Candia, a cavalier, born, as his name imports, in one of the isles of Greece. Eleven others successively crossed the line, thus inti¬mating their willingness to abide the fortunes of their leader, for good or for evil.—William H. Prescott in "History of the Conquest of Peru."

And Rustum seized his club. . . and struck One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang aside, Lithe as the glancing snake, and the club came

Thundering to earth, and leapt from Rustum ’ s hand, And Rustum followed his own blow, and fell

To his knees, and with his fingers clutched the sand; And now might Sohrab have unsheathed his sword, And pierced the mighty Rustum while he lay Dizzy, and on his knees, and choked with sand; But he looked on, and smiled, nor bared his sword, But courteously drew back, and spoke, and said:

Matthew Arnold in " Sohrab and Rustum."

These haughty princes [ the Tudors ] were therefore under a restraint stronger than any that mere law can impose, under a restraint which did not, indeed, prevent them from sometimes treating an individual in an arbitrary and even in a barbarous manner, but which effectually secured the nation against general and long continued oppression. They might safely be tyrants, within the precinct of the court: but it was necessary for them to watch with constant anxiety the temper of the country. Henry the Eighth, for example, encountered no opposition when he wished to send Buckingham and Surrey, Anne Boleyn and Lady Salisbury, to the scaffold. But when, without the consent of Parliament, he demanded of his subjects a contribution amount¬ing to one-sixth of their goods, he soon found it necessary to re¬tract. The cry of hundreds of thousands was that they were English and not French, freemen and not slaves. In Kent the royal commissioners fled for their lives. In Suffolk four thousand men appeared in arms. The King ’ s lieutenants in that county vainly exerted themselves to raise an army. These who did not join in the insurrection declared that they would not fight against their brethren in such a quarrel. Henry, proud and self-willed as he was, shrank, not without reason, from a conflict with the roused spirit of the nation. He had before his eyes the fate of his predecessors who had perished at Berkeley and Pomfret. He not only cancelled his illegal commissions; he not only granted a general pardon to all the malcontents; but he publicly and solemnly apologized for his infraction of the laws.—Thomas Bab¬ington Macaulay in "The History of England."

Cromwell ’ s fearlessness of the anger of foreign Courts was dis¬closed in his treatment of Don Pantaleon Sa, a brother of the Portuguese Ambassador. A quarrel had occurred between the Don and an English gentleman; and the former, with some of his compatriots from the Embassy, while lying in wait for the English¬man in the dusk of the. evening, attacked the first-corner, and assassinated the wrong man. Don Pantaleon then fled to the Embassy and claimed an Ambassador ’ s privilege from arrest. But Cromwell ordered him to be seized, in defiance of the lam et nations, defining for himself the ambassadorial privilege as extend¬ing only to the Ambassador in person and not to his suite. The Portuguese pleaded for his brother ’ s pardon; but the Lord Pro¬tector was inexorable. In the meantime a treaty of peace be¬tween England and Portugal was under consideration, and on the very day that the Portuguese Ambassador, in the depths of human woe, signed this treaty, his erring brother was beheaded on the scaffold by Cromwell ’ s order. This bold vindication of the law gave great satisfaction to the people.—Samuel ''Harden Church in "Oliver Cromwell." ’ ''

Once, the Duke of Richmond, who had stood high in the con¬fidence of Charles I., asked Cromwell ’ s leave to travel abroad, which was granted on the express condition that he would not see the royal heir. When the Duke returned he presented himself before the Lord Protector, who demanded to know whether he had strictly observed his promise, and was answered by the Duke that he had not seen young Charles. Cromwell inquired, "When you met Charles Stuart, who put out the candles?" The Duke was too much startled to reply. "And what," continued Oliver, "did Charles Stuart say to you?" Richmond protested that nothing confidential had passed. "Did he not give you a letter?" The Duke said No. Then Oliver, with a scorn which may easily be imagined, cried out: "The letter was sewed into the lining of your hat!" He seized the hat, discovered the treasonable letter, and sent the Duke to the Tower.—Samuel Harden Church in "Oliver Cromwell."

Then said Damfreville, "My friend,

I must speak out at the end,

Though I find the speaking hard.

Praise is deeper than the lips:

You have saved the King his ships,

You must name your own reward,

’ Faith, our sun was near eclipse!

Demand whate ’ er you will,

France remains your debtor still.

Ask to heart ’ s content and have! or my name ’ s not Damfreville."

Then a beam of fun outbroke

On the bearded mouth that spoke, As the honest heart laughed through

G. P. Putnam ’ s Sons, New York.

Those frank eyes of Breton blue: "Since I needs must say my say, Since on board the duty ’ s done,

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what

is it but a run?—

Since ’ tis ask and have, I may— Since the others go ashore—

Come! A good whole holiday!

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the

Belle Aurore!"

That he asked, and that he got,—nothing more.

Robert Browning in Hervi Biel."

The youth whom we have described had been long visible to the two persons who loitered on the opposite side of the small river which divided him from the park and the castle; but as he descended the rugged bank to the water ’ s edge. . . the younger of the two said to the other, "It is our man—it is the Bohemian! If he attempts to cross the ford he is a lost man—the water is up and the ford impassable."

"Let him make that discovery himself, gossip," said the elder personage; "it may, perchance, save a rope and break a proverb."

"1 judge him by the blue cap," said the other, "for I cannot see his face. Hark, sir, he hallooes to know whether the water is deep."

"Nothing like experience in this world," answered the other; "let him try."

The young man, in the meanwhile, receiving no hint to the con¬trary, and taking the silence of those to whom he applied as an encouragement to proceed, entered the stream without farther hesi¬tation than the delay necessary to take off his buskins. The elder person at the same moment hallooed him to beware, adding in a lower tone to his companion, " Mortdieu, gossip, you have made another mistake ; this is not the Bohemian chatterer."—Sir Walter Scott in "Quentin Durward."