Suspense, rapid action, exciting adventure, vivid description, conversation, and all the other devices of the short story may be introduced into narrative articles to increase the interest and strengthen the impression.  Whenever, therefore, material can be given a narrative form it is very desirable to do so.  A writer, however, must guard against exaggeration and the use of fictitious details.

EXAMPLES OF THE NARRATIVE ARTICLE.  How narration with descriptive touches and conversation may be effectively used to explain a new institution like the community kitchen, or the methods of recruiting employed in the army, is shown in the two articles below.  The first was taken from the New York World, and the second from the Outlook.

    (1)

    NOW THE PUBLIC KITCHEN

    BY MARIE COOLIDGE RASK

    The Community Kitchen Menu

+--------------------------------------------------+
| Vegetable soup                          pint, 3c |
| Beef stew                          half pint, 4c |
| Baked beans                        half pint, 3c |
| Two frankfurters, one potato and cup full of     |
| boiled cabbage                        all for 7c |
| Rice pudding, 3c.  Stewed peaches              3c |
| Coffee or cocoa with milk           half pint,3c |
+--------------------------------------------------+

    “My mother wants three cents’ worth of vegetable soup.”

    “And mine wants enough beef stew for three of us.”

Two battered tin pails were handed up by small, grimy fingers.  Two eager little faces were upturned toward the top of the bright green counter which loomed before them.  Two pairs of roguish eyes smiled back at the woman who reached over the counter and took the pails.

    “The beef stew will be twelve cents,” she said.  “It is four cents
    for each half pint, you know.”

“I know,” answered the youth.  “My mother says when she has to buy the meat and all and cook it and put a quarter in the gas meter, it’s cheaper to get it here.  My father got his breakfast here, too, and it only cost him five cents.”

    “And was he pleased?” asked the woman, carefully lowering the filled
    pail to the outstretched little hand.

    “You bet,” chuckled the lad, as he turned and followed the little
    procession down the length of the room and out through the door on
    the opposite side.

    The woman was Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, jr.

The boy was the son of a ’longshoreman living on “Death Avenue,” in close proximity to the newly established People’s Kitchen, situated on the southeast corner of Tenth Avenue and West Twenty-seventh Street, New York.

    So it is here at last—­the much talked of, long hoped for, community
    kitchen.