text:  A slender narrative the container of weightier ones--a technical contrivance which gave to a number of slighter compositions collectively taken the importance of a greater work--which prolonged to the tale-teller who had once gained the ear of his auditory his right of audience--and which in a world where the tongue was more active in the diffusion of literature than the quill afforded to each involved tale a memorial niche that might save it from dropping entirely away into oblivion