And Ben got up and walked to the spring, where a large curved handled gourd hung on a stick cut for the purpose, and, disdaining Reuben’s offer of a glass, took the gourd, and dipping up half the spring, drank till the long crooked handle curled over his hat, and bent back like an officer’s plume in a windy parade. When he had resumed his seat on the grass all three called for my judgment, and, with an assumption of great solemnity and dignity, I proceeded to render it.
“The object, gentlemen, of a wonderful story, or yarn, as it is vulgarly called, is not only to excite wonder, but also to evoke a pleasant surprise by discovering relations between dissimilar or contrary things, which we did not think of as possibly existing. If these dissimilars or contraries are too far apart for the mind to recognize any possible relation, then the narration becomes unpleasantly absurd, and we shrink from contemplating it. If, however, apparently improbable relations are brought out in a way that renders them possible, we are surprised and pleased with the discovery. Hence, the most exaggerated narrations are not always the most entertaining, and we derive most pleasure from hearing or reading those stories where improbabilities are unexpectedly brought within the range of possibility, or if beyond it, the fact is ingeniously concealed by possible concomitants. Thus, Munchausen’s descent from the moon by a rope of cut straw is not half so pleasant a story as the firing his gun by sparks drawn from his eye with his fists. So, were you to tell an audience that you saw a mole move a mountain no one would be pleased or surprised, as the mind would have no effort to pronounce it entirely false; but if you should say you saw a fly trained to play a tune by buzzing his wings from the top to the bottom of a wine glass, the minds of your hearers would be pleasantly occupied for a while in eliminating the true from the false, and your story would be applauded.
Ned, to-day, in his story, erred by placing his relations too far apart. A spider and an elephant! There is no exercise of ingenuity in detecting the falsity of the statement, and the story, from its very improbability, is almost out of the range of competition for the prize. Frank has so mixed his that I scarcely know how to render an opinion in regard to it. The impossible parts are utterly so, and the possible are so easily probable we are not surprised. To Ben, then, I award the prize, as having produced the most entertaining story, exciting pleasant surprise in each development, and discovering possibilities in the most unthought of relations.”