The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-08-08
THE SHORT STORY.
ANTIQUITY OF ITS EARLIEST
 FORMS.

Acknowledged Success of American Writers in This Field. To hear people talk, we might sup pose that the short story was one or MT Kipling's many inventions, or at any rate that it went back no further than Gautier or Poe. As a matter Of tact' any attempt to trace it to its earliest forms would involve an. investigation into the relative antiquity Of some or the oldest documents in the world. NO doubt a certain difference of treatment has grown up-there is a greater Iatl- tude of omission and suggestion or producing impressions by half-Words and the color of phrases and; story telling to-day has become subtler' though not A greater, art. Let any one conpare Voltaire with any Frenchman of inc f1n-de-siecle, and lie will need no further explanation. Either tells story complete in itself, raising no further question of origin or sequel; IL differs from a chapter in novel ana proves sufficient to itself. The thirst TOT stories is undying; each generation tells them with the devices 1t preferS. put the stories in the main are the same, and since the beginning Of the Woflu +bey have been short as well as long At any rate, to regard the short story from the historical point of view IS to dispose of the claim that for it's elao- ovation certain elusive qualities Of ln- telIect are required, wholly distinct from those which create the ampler nroportions of the full-grown novel. Tn noint of fact, since the beginning or modern literature (and indeed there IS no need for the qualification of modern) the rule for prose fiction has been the same as in poetry and the other arts; those who have produced masterpieces on the grand scale have been no less Tn manipulating smaller and more re- stricted work.
 Almost without exception the great est noveiists have, when they chose, ex- celled in the writing of the short story. Sometimes 1t was a more or less 1r- relevant narrative dragged into the midst of the long novel-as by Ger yantes Fielding, Smollett Scott ana Dickenss indeed, the practice, if it be dead. died out with Stevenson's dliber- ate imitation of Scott in "The Story of Tod Lapraik." Sometime it was an en- tirely disconnected episode in pfcaresoue novel, as "Gil Blas." Some times the writer employs both methods, as Sterne; at others. as in some Of the cases we have already quoted, it is hard to say in which category he should be included. The best of all short stories is probably "Wandering Willie's Tale in 'Redgauntlet,' story which Scott wrote and corrected with most unusual care and which will live as long as any whole Waverley novel, while-to come down to our own day of smaller things the best of MT. Hardy's "Wessex Tales will outline whole wilderness of Judes or D'Urbervilles and rank with i.The Trumpet Major" and Far From ssr-the Madding Crowd" Among the long CT artists there are but few exceptions it is true that some writers are toe voluminous, too much overflowing witf vitality and eagerness to observe tht narrower limits. Dumas and Hugc never achieved the necessary concentra tion and restraint while Thackeray, fol all the excellence of his short papers has left us no indisputable masterpiect in little which will rank with "Esmond' or "Vanity Fair" It is only natura that the converse rule must be laiC down with more reservation. The paint CT of small easel pictures more seldom excels in fresco or broad canvases. S' Poe is great master in the short stor! only, unless "The Narrative of Arthu Gordon Pyrn" oversteps the limits w are laying down; and MT. Kiplng ha not yet convinced the world of his pos session of "la tongue haleine" in spit of "Kim" and "The Light That Failed. And when we descend to writers of tn second rank, it is only natural that W should find them more frequently lack ing in the power of construction an management which are necessary to SC cure success on the larger scale. O course, the short story which is litera ture has excellent reasons for il length It may be that the idea
 merely fanciful and would not bear e1 pansion, as in the case of some of HaV thorne's allegories. Elsie Venner"
 an instance of this failing, and was onl saved bv virtue of Dr. Holmes gent intelligence and charm. On the otht hand, the style most suitable for u idea may be most effective within bri limits. as in some of the almost perfe work of Henry James. "The Master Beltraffio' would be no masterpiece
 it were protracted to the length
 'sThe Portrait of a Lady,
 It is hard to say to which nation u palm for the short story should awarded. On the Continent it wou be hard to deny it to France, and Ru sia, if only as the mother country
 Turgenieff, must surely stand amor the highest. But, leaving foreign lite ature on one side. we must acknoW edge that this is the department of tl literature of the English tongue
 which our native writers of rece years have unquestionably been su passed by their brethren across the A lantic It would be hard to name fo Englishmen who, as writers of she stories in the Victorian era. are at z equal to Hawthorne and Poe, Br Harte, and Henry James. All four
 these are entirely individual and ha few, if any, points in common exec this, that, while truly original, the work is in consonance with the be traditions of English style. Hawthor and Poe, besides their actual achiev ments in writing, are also what h been called "seminal'' authors in hi
 degree; their influence has lived a
 spread and has affected for good