conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'The Master of Ballantrae'?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Master of Ballantrae
  It was this continual pre-occupation that screwed me up at last to a remonstrance: a matter worthy to be narrated in detail. My lord and I sat one day at the same table upon some tedious business of detail; I have said that he had lost his former interest in such occupations; he was plainly itching to be gone, and he looked fretful, weary, and methought older than I had ever previously observed. I suppose it was the haggard face that put me suddenly upon my enterprise.
  There was a pause before he spoke, and then: 'I say nothing against him,' he replied. 'I had the most cause perhaps; but I say nothing.'
  I had never meant to put the thing so crudely; but in the extreme of fear there comes a brutal kind of courage, the most brutal indeed of all; and I burnt my ships with that plain word. I never had the answer. When I lifted my head my lord had risen to his feet, and the next moment he fell heavily on the floor. The fit or seizure endured not very long; he came to himself vacanty, put his hand to his head, which I was then supporting, and says he, in a broken voice: 'I have been ill,' and a little after: 'Help me.' I got him to his feet, and he stood pretty well, though he kept hold of the table. 'I have been ill, Mackellar,' he said again. 'Something broke, Mackellar – or was going to break, and then all swam away. I think I was very angry. Never you mind, Mackellar; never you mind, my man. I wouldnae hurt a hair upon your head. Too much has come and gone. It's a certain thing between us two. But I think, Mackellar, I will go to Mrs Henry – I think I will go to Mrs Henry,' said he, and got pretty steadily from the room, leaving me overcome with penitence.
  Presently the door flew open, and my lady swept in with flashing eyes. 'What is all this?' she cried. 'What have you done to my husband? Will nothing teach you your position in this house? Will you never cease from making and meddling?'
  I told her all with ingenuity, even as it is written here; and when she had heard me out, she pondered, and I could see her animosity fall. 'Yes,' she said, 'you meant well indeed. I have had the same thought myself, or the same temptation rather, which makes me pardon you. But, dear God, can you not understand that he can bear no more? He can bear no more!' she cried. 'The cord is stretched to snapping. What matters the future if he have one or two good days?'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I hesitated a while between the two brothers, so serious a climax did we seem to have reached. But the Master had resumed his occupation, his eyes lowered, his hand seemingly as deft as ever; and I decided to pursue my lord.
  But I was bent on dislodging the Master. That sight of him patiently returning to his needlework was more than my imagination could digest. There was never a man made, and the Master the least of any, that could accept so long a series of insults. The air smelt blood to me. And I vowed there should be no neglect of mine if, through any chink of possibility, crime could be yet turned aside. That same day, therefore, I came to my lord in his business room, where he sat upon some trivial occupation.
  He read me a while with keen eyes. 'I have never inquired into the state of your affairs, Mackellar,' says he. 'Beyond the amount of your caution, you may not be worth a farthing, for what I know.'
  As I came out of his house, all hope of intervention quite destroyed, I was aware of a stir on the harbour-side, and, raising my eyes, there was a great ship newly come to anchor. It seems strange I could have looked upon her with so much indifference, for she brought death to the brothers of Durrisdeer. After all the desperate episodes of this contention, the insults, the opposing interests, the fraternal duel in the shrubbery, it was reserved for some poor devil in Grub Street, scribbling for his dinner, and not caring what he scribbled, to cast a spell across four thousand miles of the salt sea, and send forth both these brothers into savage and wintry deserts, there to die. But such a thought was distant from my mind; and while all the provincials were fluttered about me by the unusual animation of their port, I passed throughout their midst on my return homeward, quite absorbed in the recollection of my visit and the Master's speech.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Day came, and still Secundra could not be persuaded to desist from his unavailing efforts. Sir William, leaving a small party under my command, proceeded on his embassy with the first light; and still the Indian rubbed the limbs and breathed in the mouth of the dead body. You would think such labours might have vitalised a stone; but, except for that one moment (which was my lord's death), the black spirit of the Master held aloof from its discarded clay; and by about the hour of noon, even the faithful servant was at length convinced. He took it with unshaken quietude.
  One of the men left with me was skilled in stone-cutting; and before Sir William returned to pick us up, I had chiselled on a boulder this inscription, with a copy of which I may fitly bring my narrative to a close:
  An account of how a story arose in the writer's mind, from and towards what points the course of invention travelled, what facts were utilised, what were easy and what were hard, and how the finished work looks in the eyes of its begetter, has always seemed to me excellent reading for the curious. Placed in front, I should be inclined to judge it an impertinence; placed as a rear guard to the volume, it may serve a useful purpose on occasion. The story may be read, and it may lack yet half an hour of your accustomed bedtime; or you may have bought the volume to beguile the tedium of a journey, and have come to the last page some way short of your expected destination; at such time no one would care to embark on matter entirely new, and yet he might be ready enough to dwell a little longer from a new standpoint on the same train of thought which he has been following so long. The magician after he has prepared his sleight of hand will sometimes afford a second, and a fresh, pleasure by explaining the method of his dexterity. As some such after-piece, for an empty moment, it is hoped this note may be regarded.
  It was the case of Marquis of Tullibardine that first struck me; the situation of a younger brother succeeding in this underhand, irregular fashion, and under an implied contract of seniority, to his elder's place and future, struck me as so full of bitterness, and the mental relations of a family thus circumstanced so fruitful of misjudgment and domestic animosity, it took my fancy then as a drama in a nutshell, to be solved between four persons and within four walls; with my new incident and with my new aim, I saw myself, and rejoiced to be, committed to great spaces and voyages, and a long evolution of time. But in the matter of the characters involved, I determined to adhere to the original four actors. With four characters – two brothers, a father, and a heroine (all nameless but in a determined relation) I was to carry the reader to and fro in space over a good half of the world, and sustain his interest in time through the extent of a generation.
  The need of a confidant for Mr Henry led to the introduction of Mackellar, for it was only to a servant that a man such as I conceived Mr Henry, could unbosom; and no sooner had he begun to take on lineament, than I perceived the uses of the character, and was at once tempted to intrust to him the part of a spokesman. Nothing more pleases me than for one of my puppets to display himself in his own language; in no other way than this of the dramatic monologue, are humorous and incongruous traits so persuasively presented. The narration, put in the mouth of the land steward, would supply, as if by the way and accidentally, a certain subdued element of comedy, much to be desired, and scarce otherwise, except by violence, to be introduced. Besides which, the device enabled me to view my heroine from the outside, which was doubly desirable. First, and generally, because I am always afraid of my women, who are not admired in my home circle; second, and particularly, because I should be thus enabled to pass over without realisation an ugly and delicate business – the Master's courtship of his brother's wife. Accordingly, and perfectly satisfied with myself, I hastily wrote and re-wrote the first half of my story down to the end of the duel, through the eyes and in the words of the good Ephraim. Cowardice is always punished; I had no sooner got this length, I had no sooner learned to appreciate the advantages of my method, than I was brought face to face with its defects and fell into a panic fear of the conclusion. How, with a narrator like Mackellar, should I transact the melodrama in the wilderness? How, with his style, so full of disabilities, attack a passage which must be either altogether seizing or altogether silly and absurd? The first half was already in type, when I made up my mind to have it thus done, and recommence the tale in the third person. Friends advised, one this way, one that; my publishers were afraid of the delay; indolence had doubtless a voice; I had besides a natural love for the documentary method in narration; and I ended by committing myself to the impersonation of Mackellar, and suffering the publication to proceed.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Day came, and still Secundra could not be persuaded to desist from his unavailing efforts. Sir William, leaving a small party under my command, proceeded on his embassy with the first light; and still the Indian rubbed the limbs and breathed in the mouth of the dead body. You would think such labours might have vitalised a stone; but, except for that one moment (which was my lord's death), the black spirit of the Master held aloof from its discarded clay; and by about the hour of noon, even the faithful servant was at length convinced. He took it with unshaken quietude.
  One of the men left with me was skilled in stone-cutting; and before Sir William returned to pick us up, I had chiselled on a boulder this inscription, with a copy of which I may fitly bring my narrative to a close:
  An account of how a story arose in the writer's mind, from and towards what points the course of invention travelled, what facts were utilised, what were easy and what were hard, and how the finished work looks in the eyes of its begetter, has always seemed to me excellent reading for the curious. Placed in front, I should be inclined to judge it an impertinence; placed as a rear guard to the volume, it may serve a useful purpose on occasion. The story may be read, and it may lack yet half an hour of your accustomed bedtime; or you may have bought the volume to beguile the tedium of a journey, and have come to the last page some way short of your expected destination; at such time no one would care to embark on matter entirely new, and yet he might be ready enough to dwell a little longer from a new standpoint on the same train of thought which he has been following so long. The magician after he has prepared his sleight of hand will sometimes afford a second, and a fresh, pleasure by explaining the method of his dexterity. As some such after-piece, for an empty moment, it is hoped this note may be regarded.
  It was the case of Marquis of Tullibardine that first struck me; the situation of a younger brother succeeding in this underhand, irregular fashion, and under an implied contract of seniority, to his elder's place and future, struck me as so full of bitterness, and the mental relations of a family thus circumstanced so fruitful of misjudgment and domestic animosity, it took my fancy then as a drama in a nutshell, to be solved between four persons and within four walls; with my new incident and with my new aim, I saw myself, and rejoiced to be, committed to great spaces and voyages, and a long evolution of time. But in the matter of the characters involved, I determined to adhere to the original four actors. With four characters – two brothers, a father, and a heroine (all nameless but in a determined relation) I was to carry the reader to and fro in space over a good half of the world, and sustain his interest in time through the extent of a generation.
  The need of a confidant for Mr Henry led to the introduction of Mackellar, for it was only to a servant that a man such as I conceived Mr Henry, could unbosom; and no sooner had he begun to take on lineament, than I perceived the uses of the character, and was at once tempted to intrust to him the part of a spokesman. Nothing more pleases me than for one of my puppets to display himself in his own language; in no other way than this of the dramatic monologue, are humorous and incongruous traits so persuasively presented. The narration, put in the mouth of the land steward, would supply, as if by the way and accidentally, a certain subdued element of comedy, much to be desired, and scarce otherwise, except by violence, to be introduced. Besides which, the device enabled me to view my heroine from the outside, which was doubly desirable. First, and generally, because I am always afraid of my women, who are not admired in my home circle; second, and particularly, because I should be thus enabled to pass over without realisation an ugly and delicate business – the Master's courtship of his brother's wife. Accordingly, and perfectly satisfied with myself, I hastily wrote and re-wrote the first half of my story down to the end of the duel, through the eyes and in the words of the good Ephraim. Cowardice is always punished; I had no sooner got this length, I had no sooner learned to appreciate the advantages of my method, than I was brought face to face with its defects and fell into a panic fear of the conclusion. How, with a narrator like Mackellar, should I transact the melodrama in the wilderness? How, with his style, so full of disabilities, attack a passage which must be either altogether seizing or altogether silly and absurd? The first half was already in type, when I made up my mind to have it thus done, and recommence the tale in the third person.