CHAPTER III
How to Choose Stories for Telling
There are certain subtle qualities which
a story must possess in order to give
pleasure through its telling, which are not
necessary in the story which is to be read.
These qualities are of form rather than of
substance. They are those qualities which
permit of the personality of the speaker
entering into the narrative to such an extent
that the story becomes a recounting of something
known to her. No matter how remote
in point of time or place, the story must be
of a character which can be personally set
forth. I do not mean by this that the one
who tells the story should be thrown into the
foreground, or that there should be any use
of the pronoun "I"; but simply that the
teller of the story should be able to set it
forth with all the earnestness and intimacy
of a personal narrative, and the story itself
must therefore possess the form which makes
this possible.
