ly known as the author of the
short story, _The Man Without a Country_ (December, 1863, _Atlantic
Monthly_), but his venture in the comic vein, _My Double; and How He
Undid Me_ (September, 1859, _Atlantic Monthly_), is equally worthy of
appreciation. It was his first published story of importance. Other
noteworthy stories of his are: _The Brick Moon_ (October, November and
December, 1869, _Atlantic Monthly_), _Life in the Brick Moon_
(February, 1870, _Atlantic Monthly_), and _Susan's Escort_ (May, 1890,
_Harper's Magazine_). His chief volumes of short stories are: _The Man
Without a Country, and Other Tales_ (1868); _The Brick Moon, and Other
Stories_ (1873); _Crusoe in New York, and Other Tales_ (1880); and
_Susan's Escort, and Others_ (1897). The stories by Hale which have
made his fame all show ability of no mean order; but they are
characterized by invention and ingenuity rather than by suffusing
imagination. There is not much homogeneity about Hale's work. Almost
any two stories of his read as if they might have been written by
different authors. For the time being perhaps this is an
advantage--his stories charm by their novelty and individuality. In
the long run, however, this proves rather a handicap. True
individuality, in literature as in the other arts, consists not in
"being different" on different occasions--in different works--so much
as in being _samely_ different from other writers; in being
_consistently_ one's self, rather than diffusedly various selves. This
does not lessen the value of particular stories, of course. It merely
injures Hale's fame as a whole. Perhaps some will chiefly feel not so
much that his stories are different among themselves, but that they
are not strongly anything--anybody's--in particular, that they lack
strong personality. The pathway to fame is strewn with stray
exhibitions of talent. Apart from his purely literary productions,
Hale was one of the large moral forces of his time, through "uplift"
both in speech and the written word.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), one of the leading wits of American
literature, is not at all well known as a short story writer, nor did
he write many brief pieces of fiction. His fame rests chiefly on his
poems and on the _Breakfast-Table_ books (1858-1860-1872-1890). _Old
Ironsides_, _The Last Leaf_, _The Chambered Nautilus_ and _Homesick in
Heaven_ are secure of places in the anthologies of the future, while
his lighter verse has made him