and popular approval bestowed on their
Short-stories. Even Mr. Cable's "Grandissimes" has not made his readers
forget his "Jean-ah Poquelin," nor has Mr. Aldrich's "Queen of Sheba,"
charming as she was, driven from our memory his "Margery Daw," as
delightful and as captivating as that other non-existent heroine, Mr.
Austin Dobson's "Dorothy." Mrs. Burnett put forth one volume of
Short-stories and Miss Woolson two before they attempted the more
sustained flight of the full-fledged Novel. The same may be said of Miss
Jewett, of Mr. Craddock, and of Mr. Boyesen. Mr. Bishop and Mr. Lathrop
and Mr. Julian Hawthorne wrote Short-stories before they wrote novels.
Mr. Henry James has never gathered into a book from the back-numbers of
magazines the half of his earlier efforts.

In these references to the American magazine I believe I have suggested
the real reason of the superiority of the American Short-stories over
the English. It is not only that the eye of patriotism may detect more
fantasy, more humor, a finer feeling for art, in these younger United
States, but there is a more emphatic and material reason for the
American proficiency. There is in the United States a demand for
Short-stories which does not exist in Great Britain, or at any rate not
in the same degree. The Short-story is of very great importance to the
American magazine. But in the British magazine the serial Novel is the
one thing of consequence, and all else is termed "padding." In England
the writer of three-volume Novels is the best paid of literary
laborers. So in England whoever has the gift of story-telling is
strongly tempted not to essay the difficult art of writing
Short-stories, for which he will receive only an inadequate reward; and
he is as strongly tempted to write a long story which may serve first as
a serial and afterward as a three-volume Novel. The result of this
temptation is seen in the fact that there is not a single English
novelist whose reputation has been materially assisted by the
Short-stories he has written. More than once in the United States a
single Short-story has made a man known, but in Great Britain such an
event is wellnigh impossible. The disastrous effect on narrative art of
the desire to distend every subject to the three-volume limit has been
dwelt on unceasingly by English critics.

The three-volume system is peculiar to Great Britain: it does not obtain
either in France or the United States. As a consequence, the