chiefly with the
simple question of who will ultimately marry whom. But by sedulously
dwelling on the non-essentials of life, she contrives to remind the
reader of its vast essentials. By talking to us skilfully about the
many things that do not matter, she suggests to us, inversely and with
unobtrusive irony, the few things that really do. Her very message,
therefore, is immediately dependent upon her faultless art. If she had
done her work less well, the result would have been non-significant
and wearisome.

Poe and de Maupassant are shining examples of the class of authors who
are destined to live by their art alone. Poe, in his short-stories,
said nothing of importance to the world; and de Maupassant said many
matters which might more decorously have remained untalked of. But
the thing they meant to do, they did unfalteringly; and perfect
workmanship is in itself a virtue in this world of shoddy compromise
and ragged effort. Long after people have ceased to care for battle,
murder, and sudden death, the thrill and urge of buoyant adventure,
they will re-read the boyish tales of Stevenson for the sake of their
swiftness of propulsion and exultant eloquence of style.

And fully to appreciate this class of fiction, some technical
knowledge of the art is necessary. Washington Irving's efforts must,
to a great extent, be lost on readers who are lacking in the ear
for style. He had very little to say,--merely that the Hudson is
beautiful, that the greatest sadness upon earth arises from the early
death of one we love, that laughter and tears are at their deepest
indistinguishable, and that it is very pleasant to sit before the fire
of an old baronial hall and remember musingly; but he said this
little like a gentleman,--with a charm, a grace, an easy urbanity of
demeanor, that set his work forever in the class of what has been well
done by good and faithful servants.

There is a very fine pleasure in watching with awareness the doing of
things that are done well. Hence, even for the casual reader, it is
advisable to study the methods of fiction in order to develop a more
refined delight in reading. It would seem that a detective story, in
which the interest is centered mainly in the long withholding of a
mystery, would lose its charm for a reader to whom its secret has been
once revealed. But the reader with a developed consciousness of method
finds an interest evermore renewed in returning again and again to
Poe's "M