not
necessarily to be regarded as a permanent contribution to the methods
of fiction; and Mr. Kipling, in his later stories, is a finer artist
than Miss Edna Ferber or any other of the many imitators of O. Henry.

=The Terminal Position.=--But, in the structure of the short-story,
the emphasis of the terminal position is an even more important
matter. In this regard again Poe shows his artistry, in stopping at
the very moment when he has attained completely his preestablished
design. His conclusions remain to this day unsurpassed in the sense
they give of absolute finality. Hawthorne was far less firm in
mastering the endings of his stories. His personal predilection for
pointing a moral to adorn his tale led him frequently to append a
passage of homiletic comment which was not bone of the bone and blood
of the blood of the narrative itself. In the chapter on emphasis, we
have already called attention to Guy de Maupassant's device of
periodic structure, by means of which the solution of the story is
withheld till the concluding sentences. This exceedingly effective
expedient, however, is applicable only in the sort of story wherein
the element of surprise is inherent in the nature of the theme. In no
other single feature of construction may the work of the inexperienced
author be so readily detected as in the final passage of his story.
Mr. Kipling's "Lispeth" (the first of "Plain Tales from the Hills"),
which was written at a very early age, began perfectly [the first word
is "She"] and proceeded well; but when he approached his conclusion,
the young author did not know where to stop. His story really ended at
the words, "And she never came back"; for at that point his
pre-established design had been entirely effected. But instead of
closing there, he appended four unnecessary paragraphs, dealing with
the subsequent life of his heroine--all of which was, to use his own
familiar phrase, "another story." Poe and de Maupassant would not have
made this mistake; and neither would Mr. Kipling after he had grown
into mastery of artistic method. In one of the most celebrated stories
of O. Henry, entitled "The Gift of the Magi", the author made the
technical mistake of appending a superfluous paragraph after his
logical pattern had been completed.

=Poe's Analysis of "The Raven."=--In his very interesting paper on
"The Philosophy of Composition," Edgar Allan Poe outlined step by step
the intellectual processes by which he de