te the graces
as carefully as did their predecessors. Their artistic conscience is no
less acute. Above all, they have brought the short story to a point of
singular perfection. If Edgar Poe showed them the way, they have proved
themselves apter disciples than any save the most skilful of Frenchmen.

It is, indeed, impossible to look forward to the future of American
literature without hopefulness. In that half-discovered country style
and invention go hand in hand. The land of Mr Howells and Frank Norris,
of Mrs Atherton and Mrs Wharton, of Stephen Crane and Harold Frederic,
has accomplished so much that we may look confidently for the master,
who in his single achievement will knit up its many diverse qualities
and speak to the world with the voice of America.

THE UNDERWORLD.

Nowhere and at no time, save in the England of the eighteenth century,
was the underworld so populous or so popular as in the America of
to-day. In life, as in letters, crime and criminals hold there a lofty
place. They are the romance of the street and the tenement-house. In
their adventure and ferocity there is a democratic touch, which endears
them to a free people. Nor are they so far remote from the world of
prosperity and respect in the cities of the United States as elsewhere.
The police is a firm and constant link between criminal and politician.
Wherever the safe-blowers and burglars are, there you will find
stool-pigeons and squealers, {*} ready to sell their comrades for
liberty and dollars. And if the policeman is the intimate of the
grafter, he is the client also of the boss who graciously bestowed his
uniform upon him. At chowder parties and picnics thief, policeman,
and boss meet on the terms of equality imposed upon its members by the
greatest of all philanthropic institutions--Tammany Hall. If you would
get a glimpse into this strange state within a state, you have but to
read the evidence given before the Lexow Committee {**} in 1894. It
would be difficult to match the cynicism and brutality there disclosed.

* A stool-pigeon is a thief in the pay of the police; a
squealer is a grafter who betrays his brother.

** This strange collection of documents, a whole literature
in itself, bears the prosaic title, "Investigations of the
Police Department of the City of New York."

In every line of this amazing testimony you may detect a contempt of
human life and justice, an indifference to sufferin