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There are many interesting possibilities for both the reader and the writer in a study of narrative types. It is a truism to say that everybody loves a story. Every race, every nation, every tribe, every family, has its favorite narratives. Every person has his and likes to repeat them. Even the driest old matter-of-fact curmudgeon delights in relating an incident if nothing else. Perhaps he tells you of how he lost and found again his pocket talisman—a buckeye, maybe, or a Portuguese cruzado. He will assure you that he does not really believe that the unfortunate events that followed his loss of it were occasioned by its absence, or the return of good-luck casually connected with its recovery; but still, he adds, he feels much better with the old thing in his pocket. "And that was a queer coincidence, wasn't it?" he insists, starting again over the details of the happening. So with us all: we all know and love stories, our own or another person's.

It is a fine thing to write a story. It is good through one's imagination and skill to entertain one's fellows or through one's accurate observation of life and history to benefit society. The narrator has always been honored. In earliest times he was the seer and prophet, forming the religion of his wandering tribe; later he was the welcomed guest, for whom alone the frowning castle's gate stood always open; and after the dark ages, in the time of the revival-of-the-love-of-written-things, he was the favorite at the court of favoring princes, who lavished upon him preferment and money and humbly offered him the laurel crown, their highest tribute. In our own day his reward surpasses that of kings and presidents. They come to him, and for immortality invoke his name. In earliest times he composed in verse so that his story might be remembered and handed down. In latest times he writes most often in prose—a more difficult medium to handle with distinction, but one more widely understood and more readily appreciated than poetry.