there are some people born with the gift of telling a good story
better than others, and of telling it in such a way that a great many
people can enjoy its flavor. Most of you are acquainted with some one
who is a gifted story-teller, provided that he has an audience of not
more than one or two people. And if you chance to live in the same house
with such a man, I think you will find that, no matter how good his
story may have been when you first heard it, it tends to lose its savor
after he has become thoroughly accustomed to telling it and has added it
to his private repertory.

A writer of good stories is really a man who risks telling the same
story to many thousand people. Did you ever take such a risk? Did you
ever start to tell a story to a stranger, and try to make your point
without knowing what sort of a man he was? If you did, what was your
experience? You decided, didn't you, that story-telling was an art, and
you wondered perhaps if you were ever going to learn it.

The American story-teller in the magazines is in very much the same
position, except that we have much more patience with him. Usually he is
a man who has told his story a good many times before. The first time he
told it we clapped him on the back, as he deserved perhaps, and said
that he was a good fellow. His publishers said so too. And it _was_ a
good story that he told. The trouble was that we wanted to hear it
again, and we paid him too well to repeat it. But just as your story
became rather less interesting the twenty-third time you told it, so
the stories I have been reading more often than not have made a similar
impression upon me. I find myself begging the author to think up another
story.

Of course, you have not felt obliged to read so many stories, and I
cannot advise you to do so. But it has made it possible for me to see in
some sort of perspective, just where the American short story is going
as well as what it has already achieved. It has made me see how American
writers are weakening their substance by too frequent repetition, and it
has helped me to fix the blame where it really lies.

Now this is a matter of considerable importance. One of the things we
should be most anxious to learn is the psychology of the American
reader. We want to know how he reacts to what he reads in the magazine,
whether it is a short story, an article, or an advertisement. We want to
know, for example, what holds the interest of a reader of the