o us a new corner of the
world, or sketch the familiar scene to our heart's desire, or
illumine one of the great human occupations, as war, or commerce, or
industry, he has it in his power, through this means alone, to give
us the fullest satisfaction."

From the fact that the short-story does not keep the powers of the
reader long upon the stretch, Professor Perry deduces certain
opportunities afforded to short-story writers but denied to
novelists,--opportunities, namely, "for innocent didacticism, for
posing problems without answering them, for stating arbitrary
premises, for omitting unlovely details and, conversely, for making
beauty out of the horrible, and finally for poetic symbolism." Passing
on to a consideration of the demands which the short-story makes upon
the writer, he asserts that, at its best, "it calls for visual
imagination of a high order: the power to see the object; to penetrate
to its essential nature; to select the one characteristic trait by
which it may be represented." Furthermore, it demands a mastery of
style, "the verbal magic that recreates for us what the imagination
has seen." But, on the other hand, "to write a short-story requires no
sustained power of imagination"; "nor does the short-story demand of
its author essential sanity, breadth, and tolerance of view." Since he
deals only with fleeting phases of existence--"not with wholes, but
with fragments"--the writer of the short-story "need not be
consistent; he need not think things through." Hence, in spite of the
technical difficulties which beset the author of short-stories, his
work is, on human grounds, more easy than that of the novelist, who
must be sane and consistent, and must be able to sustain a prolonged
effort of interpretive imagination.

=The Novelist and the Writer of Short-Stories.=--These points have
been so fully covered and so admirably illustrated by Professor Perry
that they do not call for any further discussion in this place. But
perhaps something may be added concerning the different equipments
that are required by authors of novels and authors of short-stories.
Matthew Arnold, in a well-known sonnet, spoke of Sophocles as a man
"who saw life steadily and saw it whole"; and if we judge the novelist
and the writer of short-stories by their attitudes toward life, we may
say that they divide this verse between them. Balzac, George Eliot,
and Meredith look at life in the large; they try to "see it whole" and
to