of a slum may operate
powerfully to produce on a reader of a story placed therein an
impression of desolation or of misery, but that impression will derive
from something other than the setting, and will merely be reinforced
thereby. If a slum story is essentially cheerful and light-hearted in
content, its reader will not be oppressed by the setting, however
truthfully touched in, unless the writer deliberately makes his people
seem miraculous in point of their capacity to avoid the contagion of
their surroundings. The young girl in "The Dawn of a To-Morrow" is an
instance of what is meant by the qualification.

Atmosphere is not setting, nor is it anything at all that is in a
story. It is not the quality of the environment; it is not the general
quality of the people or their acts; it is not the quality of the theme
or plot. What is it? It is the general emotional impression made on a
reader by the whole story. It is nothing that is in a story; it is the
emotional effect produced by the story on a reader. Just as a scene, an
event, or a person, unless very commonplace, will have some emotional
effect on an observer, any story that is told so as to create the
illusion of reality will have some emotional effect on a reader. As
Stevenson said to Balfour: "I'll give you an example--'The Merry Men,'
There I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast
of Scotland, and I gradually developed the story to express the
sentiment with which the coast affected me."

A distinction should be noted here. "The Merry Men" is a strict story of
atmosphere; its author, as he implicitly states, started with an
emotional effect, or "sentiment," and devised only such persons and
action as would deepen on a reader the emotional impression initiated in
this case by the setting. But, as has been stated, any story told so as
to create the illusion of reality will have some totality of emotional
effect on a reader, apart from its specific emotional effects in various
parts, unless the fiction is very commonplace. That is to say, the
strict story of atmosphere, which has been touched on briefly in
discussing story-types, subordinates its action and its people to its
totality of emotional effect; in the normal story, whether it stresses
personality or event, atmosphere, or totality of emotional effect on a
reader, is a subordinate consideration, resulting from the necessity
that an observer of persons and events be affected th