dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead.
What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh
living current which flows through the best of our work, and the
psychological and imaginative reality which our writers have conferred
upon it.

No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic
substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is
beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair
to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination
than we display at present.

During the past year I have sought to select from the stories published
in American magazines those which have rendered life imaginatively in
organic substance and artistic form. As the most adequate means to this
end, I have taken each short story by itself, and examined it
impartially. I have done my best to surrender myself to the writer's
point of view, and granting his choice of material and personal
interpretation of its value, have sought to test it by the double
standard of substance and form. Substance is something achieved by the
artist in every act of creation, rather than something already present,
and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a story only obtain
substantial embodiment when the artist's power of compelling imaginative
persuasion transforms them into a living truth. The first test of a
short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis is to report upon
how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents.
This test may be known as the test of substance.

But a second test is necessary if a story is to take high rank above
other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance
into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and
arrangement of his material, and by the most direct and appealing
presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.

The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous
years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first group consists
of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test
of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the
year-book without comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group
consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive
either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories
may claim to possess either distin