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Time was that the tale-teller was obliged to wind up his story by a circumstantial description of the wedding, bedding, and throwing the stocking, as the grand catastrophe to which, through so many circumstances of doubt and difficulty, he had at length happily conducted his hero and heroine.
The tale-teller has just finished a story, when two white-clad men with white turbans on their heads emerge from the darkness of the night. They tie up their dromedaries, humbly salute Shah Sevar, who invites them to sit down and help themselves to tea from an iron pot. Other men come up to the fire. All carry long guns, spears, swords, and daggers. Some lead two or three dromedaries each.
He was called Nemu, or "the dwarf," and his sharp tongue made him much feared, though he was a favorite, for he passed for a very clever fellow and was a good tale-teller. "Make room for me, my lords," said the little man. "I take very little room, and your beer and roast is in little danger from me, for my maw is no bigger than a fly's head."
Between merit and reward there is in literature no relation. Just as the music-hall singer may earn a larger income than the statesman, so may the tawdry tale-teller drive the thinker and artist out of the market. The artistic value of a book is therefore absolutely unrelated to the commercial value; but such commercial value as there is to whom should it fall if not to the author?
He had met Robert Louis Stevenson once, the tale-teller of Eugenia's story, and he well understood the influence of that noble life over the old chiefs who called him "brother." The words that Eugenia had quoted in her letter rang in his ears all day, every way he turned: "Fame dies and honours perish, but loving-kindness is immortal."
Is it easy now to fool all of us all of the time, so that a tale-teller dares to expose silly romance at the beginning of his story, and yet dose us with it at the end? Not that one objects to romance. It is as necessary as food, and almost as valuable. But romance that pretends to be realism, realism that fizzles out into sentimental romance is there any excuse for that?
I must refer to a very early period of my life, were I to point out my first achievements as a tale-teller; but I believe some of my old schoolfellows can still bear witness that I had a distinguished character for that talent, at a time when the applause of my companions was my recompense for the disgraces and punishments which the future romance-writer incurred for being idle himself, and keeping others idle, during hours that should have been employed on our tasks.
That which I, poor tale-teller, mumbling and toothless, have attempted to depict in a long description, Ogger perceived at one rapid glance, and said to Didier, 'Here is what ye have so anxiously sought: and whilst uttering these words he fell down almost lifeless." The monk of St. Gall does King Didier and his people wrong.
I'd never hope to write stories that grown people would be interested in, and love as they love Tusitala's, but just to be the children's 'tale-teller, and to write stories that they would listen to long after I am dead and gone why that would be worth living for, even if I never saw the light again. And godmother thinks I can do it."
"You mind your own business!" cried Mercer, tearing out some more leaves, and then throwing the book at the tale-teller just as the tall, thin boy, who bore the same name as I, came striding up with his face flushed and fists doubled, to plant three or four vigorous blows in Mercer's chest and back. "How dare you tear my book?" he cried. "Here, you, fat Dicksee, bring it here."
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