of
essays, poems, short stories, and dramatic dialogue, each within the
compass of a few pages, each contributed by a different writer as an
example of his work for the year. We may suppose now that the
reader is asked to gather from this volume, read hastily and either
superficially or in random bits, some idea of the significance of each
author and of the import and scope of contemporary American
literature. Is it a fair test? This volume, we may further suppose, is
practically the only means by which the writer can get his work
before the public. A public means a purchaser, and of course the
writer must live. Is it reasonable to think that every number
contributed to such a volume will be a work of art, wrought with
singleness of heart and in loving devotion to an ideal? There are still
with us those who "work for money" and those who "work for
fame." There are those who believe in "giving the public what it
wants," and the numbers they contribute to the yearly volumes are
samples of the sort of thing they do, from which the public may
order. In the table of contents stand celebrated names; and to the
work of such men, perhaps, will turn the seeker after what he thinks
ought to be the best, not realizing that these are the men who have
known how to "give the people what they want," that the people do
not always want the good and right thing, and that it is somewhat the
habit of genius to dispense with contemporary recognition. If there
is here or there in the book an essay or a poem the product of
thought and effort and offered in all seriousness, how little chance it
has of being appreciated, except by a few, even if it is remarked at
all in the jumble of miscellaneous contributions.

This hypothetical volume is a fair parallel of an annual exhibition of
paintings. In such an exhibition the number of works of art, the true,
inevitable expression of a new message, is relatively small. The
most celebrated and most popular painters are not necessarily by
that fact great artists, or indeed artists at all. Contemporary judgment
is notoriously liable to go astray. The gods of one generation are
often the laughing stock of the next; the idols of the fathers are torn
down and trampled under foot by the children. Some spirits there
have been of liberal promise who have not been able to withstand
the demands made upon them by early popular approval. Such is the
struggle and soul's tragedy which is studied convincingly in Mr