a Mater," at the other,
accomplishes the same end in two thousand. It is a matter of record
that the Committee discovered a number of excellent examples
containing not more than two thirds this latter number, a fact that
argues against the merging of the short story and the novel. Finally,
the Committee believe the fiction of the year 1920 superior to that
of 1919.

BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS,
NEW YORK CITY,
March 3, 1921.

EACH IN HIS GENERATION

BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT

From _Scribner's Magazine_

Every afternoon at four o'clock, except when the weather was very
bad--autumn, winter, and spring--old Mr. Henry McCain drove up to
the small, discreet, polished front door, in the small, discreet,
fashionable street in which lived fairly old Mrs. Thomas Denby; got
out, went up the white marble steps, rang the bell, and was admitted
into the narrow but charming hall--dim turquoise-blue velvet
panelled into the walls, an etching or two: Whistler, Brangwyn--by a
trim parlour-maid. Ten generations, at least, of trim parlour-maids
had opened the door for Mr. McCain. They had seen the sparkling
victoria change, not too quickly, to a plum-coloured limousine; they
had seen Mr. McCain become perhaps a trifle thinner, the colour in
his cheeks become a trifle more confined and fixed, his white hair
grow somewhat sparser, but beyond that they had seen very little
indeed, although, when they had left Mr. McCain in the drawing-room
with the announcement that Mrs. Denby would be down immediately, and
were once again seeking the back of the house, no doubt their
eyebrows, blonde, brunette, or red, apexed to a questioning angle.

In the manner of youth the parlour-maids had come, worked, fallen in
love and departed, but Mr. McCain, in the manner of increasing age,
had if anything grown more faithful and exact to the moment. If he
were late the fraction of five minutes, one suspected that he
regretted it, that it came near to spoiling his entire afternoon. He
was not articulate, but occasionally he expressed an idea and the
most common was that he "liked his things as he liked them";
his eggs, in other words, boiled just so long, no more--after
sixty years of inner debate on the subject he had apparently
arrived at the conclusion that boiled eggs were the only kind of eggs
permissible--his life punctual and serene. The smallest manifestation
of unexpectedness disturbed him. Obviously that was one reason why,
after a