"In Medias Res" Perhaps the method of rushing at once "in medias res" is, of all the ways of beginning a story, or a separate branch of a story, the least objectionable.

The reader is made to think that the gold lies so near the surface that he will be required to take very little trouble in digging for it.

And the writer is enabled,--at any rate for a time, and till his neck has become, as it were, warm to the collar,--to throw off from him the difficulties and dangers, the tedium and prolixity, of description.

This rushing "in medias res" has doubtless the charm of ease.

"Certainly, when I threw her from the garret window to the stony pavement below, I did not anticipate that she would fall so far without injury to life or limb." When a story has been begun after this fashion, without any prelude, without description of the garret or of the pavement, or of the lady thrown, or of the speaker, a great amount of trouble seems to have been saved.