ed, after praise such as an editor seldom risks, "there is
something the matter with it, after all. I wonder if you can tell me
what it is."

The writer was, for a writer so flattered, strangely modest. All he
could say, he answered, was that he had done his best. The editor,
agreeing that he certainly seemed to have done that, was all the more
curious to find out how it was that a man who could do so well had not
been able to add to his achievement the final "something" that was
missing.

"What puzzles me," said the editor finally, "is that, with all the
rest, you were not able to add--humanity. Your story seems to have
been written by a wonderful literary machine, instead of by a man."

And, no doubt, the young story-writer went away sorrowful, in spite of
the acceptance of his story--which, after all, was only lacking in that
quality which you will find lacking in all the writing of the day, save
in that by one or two exceptional writers, who, by their isolation, the
more forcibly point the moral.

A wonderful literary machine! The editor's phrase very nearly hits off
the situation. As we have the linotype to set up the written words with
a minimum of human agency, we really seem to be within measurable
distance of a similar automaton that will produce the literature to be
set up without the intrusion of any flesh-and-blood author. In this
connection I may perhaps be permitted to quote a sentence or two from
myself, written _a propos_ a certain chameleonesque writer whose
deservedly popular works are among the contemporary books that I most
value:

A peculiar skill seems to have been developed among writers during
the last twenty years--that of writing in the manner of some master,
not merely with mimetic cleverness, but with genuine creative power.
We have poets who write so like Wordsworth and Milton that one can
hardly differentiate them from their masters; and yet--for this is
my point--they are no mere imitators, but original poets, choosing,
it would seem, some old mask of immortality through which to express
themselves. In a different way from that of Guy de Maupassant they
have chosen to suppress themselves, or rather, I should say, that,
whereas De Maupassant strove to suppress, to eliminate, himself,
their method is that of disguise.

In some respects they remind one of the hermit-crab, who annexes
some beautiful ready-made house, instead of making