Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/44

 Some will feel that they have spoiled the story. They have bungled the structure through unskillful placing, or omission of necessary details. They have dulled life, dimmed beauty, obscured truth for lack of words. Well, there is no harm done as yet. These students, studying again the parts in which they failed, will appreciate now more thoroughly play and interplay of character, detail and course of action, vivid word. The cat in "The Bremen Town Musicians," they will note, is capitally described (in some accepted texts) as having a face that looked like "three days of rainy weather;" Snow-White and Rose-Red were "like the rose-bushes in their mother's garden;" they will not miss in "The Cat and the Mouse" the cat's sly description of the pot of fat and the apt names he gives his bogus godchildren. In this way the appropriate word or phrase will come to them easily.

The question often asked, "Am I to hold myself to the text?" is interesting. It applies of course only to artistic texts, not to formless source material. Some people contend that this destroys the spirit of story-telling, making the art mechanical instead of creative.

Story-telling is creative effort, never mere repetition of the letter. It is creative effort, whether you make live again something produced by another, or