Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1919 — Want Happy Endings. [ARTICLE]

Want Happy Endings.

Why the unhappy ending is the Stock weakness of the beginner at story writing is easy to explain. Stories with unhappy endings are easier to write. The human mind is naturally subjective and sad; vocabularies in every language have many more adjectives, verbs and adverbs to express sorrow and gloom than to express happiness and light-hearted-ness. This subject lends itself nicely to a debate, but as far as the men in the war hospitals are concerned the argument has only one side: Give us happy endings! A Red Cross nurse tells of a serial story that had been read by two of her patients, one of whom was depressed for a whole day because the heroine died. “I wish I’d never read it,” he complained. “I fell In love with that girl. Ls I ever found one exactly like her. I’d certainly ask her to marry me!”