Let's talk about Getting the Reader to Care:
Time to play the analysis game. This time, a classic work. Best seller, multiple editions ....
Say, ye oppressed by some fantastic woes,
Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose,
Who press the downy couch while slaves advance
With timid eye to read the distant glance,
Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease
To name the nameless, ever-new disease,
Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
Which real pain and that alone can cure,
How would you bear in real pain to lie
Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
How would you bear to draw your latest breath
Where all that's wretched paves the way to death?
--Crabbe.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at
occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which
swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling
along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the
lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest
quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the
police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary
way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a
description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which
they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which
did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received were
couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to
himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and
discontent. At length, at one house, the landlord, a sturdy butcher,
after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto received, added,
"But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!"
Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded that he thought the
thing proffered might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket,
he strode away with as rapid a motion as the wind and the rain would
allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy buildings, at the
entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written "Thames
Court." Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or
alehouse, through the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy
comfort the beams of the hospitable hearth, he knocked hastily at the
door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and endowed with a
comely rotundity of face and person.
"Hast got it, Dummie?" said she, quickly, as she closed the door on the
guest.
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End of page one. Well, do you turn the page?
What do you know, and do you care?