The Value and Meaning of Perspective Select a fictional text of your choice and write a paper that aims to convince your readers of the importance of perspective in understanding and interpreting the

below, the stream could be crossed on stepping-stones. And aroundand around, up and down and across the stones, raced Claverhouse andBellona. I could never have believed that such an ungainly man couldrun so fast. But run he did, Bellona hot-footed after him, andgaining. And then, just as she caught up, he in full stride, and sheleaping with nose at his knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst ofsmoke, a terrific detonation, and where man and dog had been theinstant before there was naught to be seen but a big hole in theground."Death from accident while engaged in illegal fishing." That was theverdict of the coroner's jury; and that is why I pride myself on theneat and artistic way in which I finished off John Claverhouse.There was no bungling, no brutality; nothing of which to be ashamedin the whole transaction, as I am sure you will agree. No more doeshis infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, and no more does hisfat moon-face rise up to vex me. My days are peaceful now, and mynight's sleep deep.THE LEOPARD MAN'S STORYHe had a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes, and his sad, insistentvoice, gentle-spoken as a maid's, seemed the placid embodiment ofsome deep-seated melancholy. He was the Leopard Man, but he did notlook it. His business in life, whereby he lived, was to appear in acage of performing leopards before vast audiences, and to thrillthose audiences by certain exhibitions of nerve for which hisemployers rewarded him on a scale commensurate with the thrillshe produced.As I say, he did not look it. He was narrow-hipped, narrow-shouldered,and anaemic, while he seemed not so much oppressed by gloom as by asweet and gentle sadness, the weight of which was as sweetly andgently borne. For an hour I had been trying to get a story out ofhim, but he appeared to lack imagination. To him there was no romancein his gorgeous career, no deeds of daring, no thrills--nothing buta gray sameness and infinite boredom.Lions? Oh, yes! he had fought with them. It was nothing. All you hadto do was to stay sober. Anybody could whip a lion to a standstillwith an ordinary stick. He had fought one for half an hour once.Just hit him on the nose every time he rushed, and when he gotartful and rushed with his head down, why, the thing to do was tostick out your leg. When he grabbed at the leg you drew it back andhit hint on the nose again. That was all.With the far-away look in his eyes and his soft flow of words heshowed me his scars. There were many of them, and one recent onewhere a tigress had reached for his shoulder and gone down to thebone. I could see the neatly mended rents in the coat he had on. Hisright arm, from the elbow down, looked as though it had gone througha threshing machine, what of the ravage wrought by claws and fangs.But it was nothing, he said, only the old wounds bothered himsomewhat when rainy weather came on.Suddenly his face brightened with a recollection, for he was reallyas anxious to give me a story as I was to get it."I suppose you've heard of the lion-tamer who was hated by anotherman?" he asked.He paused and looked pensively at a sick lion in the cage opposite."Got the toothache," he explained. "Well, the lion-tamer's big play to the audience was putting his head in a lion's mouth. The man whohated him attended every performance in the hope sometime of seeingthat lion crunch down. He followed the show about all over thecountry. The years went by and he grew old, and the lion-tamer grewold, and the lion grew old. And at last one day, sitting in a frontseat, he saw what he had waited for. The lion crunched down, andthere wasn't any need to call a doctor."The Leopard Man glanced casually over his finger nails in a mannerwhich would have been critical had it not been so sad."Now, that's what I call patience," he continued, "and it's mystyle. But it was not the style of a fellow I knew. He was a little,thin, sawed-off, sword-swallowing and juggling Frenchman. De Ville,he called himself, and he had a nice wife. She did trapeze work andused to dive from under the roof into a net, turning over once onthe way as nice as you please."De Ville had a quick temper, as quick as his hand, and his hand wasas quick as the paw of a tiger. One day, because the ring-mastercalled him a frog-eater, or something like that and maybe a littleworse, he shoved him against the soft pine background he used inhis knife-throwing act, so quick the ring-master didn't have timeto think, and there, before the audience, De Ville kept the airon fire with his knives, sinking them into the wood all around thering-master so close that they passed through his clothes and mostof them bit into his skin."The clowns had to pull the knives out to get him loose, for he waspinned fast. So the word went around to watch out for De Ville, andno one dared be more than barely civil to his wife. And she was asly bit of baggage, too, only all hands were afraid of De Ville."But there was one man, Wallace, who was afraid of nothing. He wasthe lion-tamer, and he had the self-same trick of putting his headinto the lion's mouth. He'd put it into the mouths of any of them,though he preferred Augustus, a big, good-natured beast who couldalways be depended upon."As I was saying, Wallace--'King' Wallace we called him--was afraidof nothing alive or dead. He was a king and no mistake. I've seenhim drunk, and on a wager go into the cage of a lion that'd turnednasty, and without a stick beat him to a finish. Just did it withhis fist on the nose."Madame de Ville--"At an uproar behind us the Leopard Man turned quietly around. It wasa divided cage, and a monkey, poking through the bars and around thepartition, had had its paw seized by a big gray wolf who was tryingto pull it off by main strength. The arm seemed stretching outlonger end longer like a thick elastic, and the unfortunate monkey'smates were raising a terrible din. No keeper was at hand, so theLeopard Man stepped over a couple of paces, dealt the wolf a sharpblow on the nose with the light cane he carried, and returned with asadly apologetic smile to take up his unfinished sentence as thoughthere had been no interruption."--looked at King Wallace and King Wallace looked at her, while DeVille looked black. We warned Wallace, but it was no use. He laughedat us, as he laughed at De Ville one day when he shoved De Ville'shead into a bucket of paste because he wanted to fight."De Ville was in a pretty mess--I helped to scrape him off; but hewas cool as a cucumber and made no threats at all. But I saw aglitter in his eyes which I had seen often in the eyes of wildbeasts, and I went out of my way to give Wallace a final warning. He laughed, but he did not look so much in Madame de Ville's directionafter that."Several months passed by. Nothing had happened and I was beginningto think it all a scare over nothing. We were West by that time,showing in 'Frisco. It was during the afternoon performance, and thebig tent was filled with women and children, when I went looking forRed Denny, the head canvas-man, who had walked off with mypocket-knife."Passing by one of the dressing tents I glanced in through a holein the canvas to see if I could locate him. He wasn't there, butdirectly in front of me was King Wallace, in tights, waiting for histurn to go on with his cage of performing lions. He was watchingwith much amusement a quarrel between a couple of trapeze artists.All the rest of the people in the dressing tent were watching thesame thing, with the exception of De Ville whom I noticed staring atWallace with undisguised hatred. Wallace and the rest were all toobusy following the quarrel to notice this or what followed."But I saw it through the hole in the canvas. De Ville drew hishandkerchief from his pocket, made as though to mop the sweat fromhis face with it (it was a hot day), and at the same time walkedpast Wallace's back. The look troubled me at the time, for notonly did I see hatred in it, but I saw triumph as well."'De Ville will bear watching,' I said to myself, and I reallybreathed easier when I saw him go out the entrance to the circusgrounds and board an electric car for down town. A few minuteslater I was in the big tent, where I had overhauled Red Denny. KingWallace was doing his turn and holding the audience spellbound. Hewas in a particularly vicious mood, and he kept the lions stirredup till they were all snarling, that is, all of them except oldAugustus, and he was just too fat and lazy and old to get stirredup over anything."Finally Wallace cracked the old lion's knees with his whip and gothim into position. Old Augustus, blinking good-naturedly, opened hismouth and in popped Wallace's head. Then the jaws came together,CRUNCH, just like that."The Leopard Man smiled in a sweetly wistful fashion, and thefar-away look came into his eyes."And that was the end of King Wallace," he went on in his sad, lowvoice. "After the excitement cooled down I watched my chance andbent over and smelled Wallace's head. Then I sneezed.""It . . . it was . . .?" I queried with halting eagerness."Snuff--that De Ville dropped on his hair in the dressing tent. OldAugustus never meant to do it. He only sneezed."LOCAL COLOR"I do not see why you should not turn this immense amount of unusualinformation to account," I told him. "Unlike most men equipped withsimilar knowledge, YOU have expression. Your style is--""Is sufficiently--er--journalese?" he interrupted suavely."Precisely! You could turn a pretty penny."But he interlocked his fingers meditatively, shrugged his shoulders,