nevertheless, if we except Kipling in general, and Doyle in the detective story, and remember that Conrad and Hewlett have become novelists, it will probably be admitted that greater merit as well as greater quantity are prevailingly to be found upon this side of the water. The American short story is usually better than the English, as the English novel is usually better than the American. A superficial cause may be found in the popularity of the illustrated magazine in America, with the opportunity it offers to the writer of the short story. But the real causes lie deeper, in temperament, in environment, in taste, and in the tradition which I have endeavored to follow in these pages.

To attempt anything like a detailed criticism, or even a classification, of modern writers of the short story is beyond the scope of this brief survey, and the powers of the writer. The short story of 1912 must endure time's sifting. And yet some characteristics of contemporary work cannot escape observation, although they may be easily misunderstood.

The form established by the nineteenth century does not seem to be materially changing. Thanks to magazine requirements, American stories have become in general. shorter, their mechanism more obvious. In England, two admirable writers were for a time apostles of a freer, broader handling of the short-story idea, Maurice Hewlett, with his charming Little Novels of Italy (1899), and Joseph Conrad in his memorable Youth (1902). American story-tellers seem to be binding themselves more and more strictly to a rigorous technique. In subject, and, so to speak, in mood, there has been a little more alteration. And yet, in comparison with the new English authors, Wells, Bennett, and Galsworthy, writers of short stories have been strangely conservative. The

romantic story of the brusque and adventurous variety, which Kipling made popular, has not lost its vogue, as the success of such writers as Owen Wister, Jack London, Gouverneur Morris, and R. H. Davis proves. The psychological narrative of Henry James has become, with Miss Wharton, a powerful instrument for the analysis of American individuality. And the tendency towards mysticism which Kipling illustrated has certainly not abated. The story with a quip to it, and real and humorous life for a subject, fills our magazines, and has found at least one master in the late O. Henry. These categories present nothing new; but in the contemporary representative of the local-color story there is, perhaps, a novelty. The new local impressionist takes his material not from regions, but from races and classes, and his point of view is more social than psychological. Great quantities of our short stories deal with the immigrant: the Jew, the Pole, or the Japanese. Others take an industrial instead of a racial class, and depict life in the steel mills, the mines, or the wheat fields. A vivid description of the peculiarities of the chosen class distinguishes these stories, and it is here that the vitality of local color shows itself. But there is also a social consciousness (very different from the individualistic self-consciousness of Kipling's stories and Harte's), which relates this work to some of the prevailing tendencies of the times, and suggests the "social conscience" of the new English novel. Often, as in the light sketches of O. Henry and Montague Glass, only humorous capital is made of the class characteristics that give the tale its flavor; but again, for example in some of the narratives of the "muck-raking" school, it would seem that local color has cut loose from the romantic movement which inspired it, and become a means for an imaginative study of our social disorders. It is the new

journalized magazine which has encouraged these stories, and, since they must partake of the character of news, it is not surprising to find them more vigorous than artistic.

The short story is certainly in danger from its popularity. That, and especially its adoption by the newspapers, and the illustrated newspapers which we still call magazines, is unquestionably vulgarizing the product. There is a premium upon all that is or can be made journalistic; and the result is a lack of style, which means usually lack of thought, and, worse still, a cheapness and unsubstantiality in the materials out of which the stories are made. What can be expected when they are written for publications which often live but the space between press and dust-bin! And yet only a literary snob could be distressed by these conditions. In some of our weeklies, the short narratives have four times the circulation a Waverley novel could command! Millions want short stories; no talent could supply literary short stories for this clamoring multitude, even if it wanted them. Literature must be bent to its uses, and the demerits of the many need not trouble us if there is merit in a few.

Unfortunately, the few seem to be governed by critical standards better adapted to the many. If one may judge by the current magazines, stories must be respectable, even when vulgar; must end happily; must lend themselves to illustration; must appeal to the average woman; should contain a humorous personality (which will do instead of a plot) restrictions that are not good for art. With a few exceptions, serious work is not given a free hand—except in the humorous story, where the author may study man or woman as intensely as he likes! Triviality may not be preferred-but the evidence points in the opposite direction. Yet the short story has been raised into litera

ture only in those fortunate times when skill, or the circumstances of the moment, have given its slight fabric a serious purpose, a worthy substance, or consummate art. It can be light, it can be graceful, it can be amusing, it can be airy. But triviality kills it.

The short story is also in danger from a change in taste;-not a change on the part of the multitude of readers, for to that it would respond; but a change of taste in the writers who really count. If, as H. G. Wells, brilliant writer of both short stories and novels, has recently said, the social changes which characterize this arc of the century are so truly societal as to require the broad sweep of the novel to record them, then, indeed, the ever moving tide of vital literary energy may take a new direction, and swing its main currents away from the short story through which it has flowed. This is speculation merely; but something like it happened in the sixteenth century, and again at the turn of the nineteenth, when the didactic short narrative of the periodicals disappeared.

But prophesying is poor work. It is better to stick to facts, and to point out what seems to be undeniably true, that it is far easier to find masterpieces of the short story in the half-century before 1900 than in the twelve years after that date; and that the proportion of memorable short stories in the past ten years seems utterly and ridiculously out of keeping with the whole number produced. When the dust settles we may think differently. It may then appear that the vast amount of cheap stuff has blinded us to the relative importance of Kipling's rare experiments in psychic romance; of Miss Wharton's character analysis; of the gems of local color which Mrs. Wilkins-Freeman, Mrs. Deland, and others have recently given us. We must always fight against the prejudice (by no means dead, though now subter

ranean) against fiction; and remember that a perfect short story, because it is a short story, will be strangely undervalued in comparison with artistically second-rate essay, drama, or verse. Nevertheless, it is a fair conclusion that unless new masters arise in the fields of journalism whither we are trending, art will not be so well served by the short story in the immediate future as in the past.