CHAPTER XXI

 

INFLUENCING BY NARRATION

 

The art of narration is the art of writing in hooks and eyes. The principle

consists in making the appropriate thought follow the appropriate thought, the

proper fact the proper fact; in first preparing the mind for what is to come,

and then letting it come.

 

--WALTER BAGEHOT, _Literary Studies_.

 

Our very speech is curiously historical. Most men, you may observe, speak only

to narrate; not in imparting what they have thought, which indeed were often a

very small matter, but in exhibiting what they have undergone or seen, which is

a quite unlimited one, do talkers dilate. Cut us off from Narrative, how would

the stream of conversation, even among the wisest, languish into detached

handfuls, and among the foolish utterly evaporate! Thus, as we do nothing but

enact History, we say little but recite it.

 

--THOMAS CARLYLE, _On History_.

 

Only a small segment of the great field of narration offers its resources to the

public speaker, and that includes the anecdote, biographical facts, and the

narration of events in general.