t merely happen to be
short, instead of true short-stories in the modern critical sense. Yet
these brief fictions, which are not short-stories, and for which we
have no name, are none the less estimable in content, and sometimes
present a wider view of life than could be encompassed within the
rigid limits of a technical short-story. Hawthorne's tales stand
higher in the history of literature than Poe's, because they reveal a
deeper insight into life, even though the great New England dreamer
often violates the principle of economy of means, and constructs less
firmly than the mathematically-minded Poe. Washington Irving's brief
tales, such as "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,"
which are not short-stories in the technical sense of the term, are
far more valuable as representations of humanity than many a
structural masterpiece of Guy de Maupassant. "For my part," Irving
wrote to one of his friends, "I consider a story merely as a frame on
which to stretch the materials; it is the play of thought, and
sentiment, and language, the weaving in of characters, lightly yet
expressively delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of
scenes in common life; and the half-concealed vein of humor that is
often playing through the whole,--these are among what I aim at, and
upon which I felicitate myself in proportion as I think I succeed."
There is much to be said in favor of this meandering and leisurely
method; and authors too intent upon a merely technical accomplishment
may lose the genial breadth of outlook upon life which men like Irving
have so charmingly displayed. Let us admit, therefore, that the
story-which-is-merely-short is just as worthy of cultivation as the
technical short-story.

=Short-Stories That Are Not Brief.=--But if there exist many brief
tales which are not short-stories, so also there exist certain
short-stories which are not brief. "The Turn of the Screw," by Henry
James, is a short-story, in the technical sense of the term, although
it contains between two and three hundred pages. Assuredly it is not a
novelette. It aims to produce one narrative effect, and only one; and
it is difficult to imagine how the full force of its cumulative
mystery and terror could have been created with greater economy of
means. It is a long short-story. Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde," which is conceived, and for the most part executed, as a
short-story, is longer than the same author's "The Beach o