place," said the critic, "Americans do not prefer
Short-stories, as is shown by the enormous number of British Novels
circulated among us; and in the second place, tales of the quiet,
domestic kind, which form the staple of periodicals like 'All the Year
Round' and 'Chambers's Journal,' have here thousands of readers where
native productions, however clever and original, have only hundreds,
since the former are reprinted by the country papers and in the Sunday
editions of city papers as rapidly and as regularly as they are produced
at home." Now, the answer to this is simply that these English Novels
and English stories are reprinted widely in the United States, not
because the American people prefer them to anything else, but because,
owing to the absence of international copyright, they cost nothing. That
the American people prefer to read American stories when they can get
them is shown by the enormous circulation of the periodicals which make
a specialty of American fiction.

I find I have left myself little space to speak of the Short-story as it
exists in other literatures than those of Great Britain and the United
States, The conditions which have killed the Short-story in England do
not obtain elsewhere; and elsewhere there are not a few good writers of
Short-stories. Tourgeneff, Bjoernsen, Sacher-Masoch, Freytag, Lindau, are
the names which one recalls at once and without effort as masters in the
art and mystery of the Short-story. Tourgeneff's Short-stories, in
particular, it would be difficult to commend too warmly. But it is in
France that the Short-story flourishes most abundantly. In France the
conditions are not unlike those in the United States; and, although
there are few French magazines, there are many Parisian newspapers of a
wide hospitality to literature. The demand for the Short-story has
called forth an abundant supply. Among the writers of the last
generation who excelled in the _conte_--which is almost the exact French
equivalent for Short-story, as _nouvelle_ may be taken to indicate the
story which is merely short, the episode, the incident, the amplified
anecdote--were Alfred de Musset, Theophile Gautier, and Prosper Merimee.
The best work of Merimee has never been surpassed. As compression was
with him almost a mania, as, indeed, it was with his friend Tourgeneff,
he seemed born on purpose to write Short-stories. Tourgeneff carried his
desire for conciseness so far that he seems always to be