land, Margaret Sutton Briscoe, Booth Tarkington, Alice Brown, Mrs. Andrews, Mary Tracy Earle, Mrs. Donnell, Robert W. Chambers, Roy Rolfe Gilson, Miss Jordan, Miss Daskam, Mary Applewhite Bacon, and a score of others we might mention,—have contributed as distinctly new features to the short story.
The diversification of the short story during the period under review—the last twenty years—is one of the most striking features of its development, and shows that the development is in the lines of a natural evolution. How complex the variety resulting from this tendency must be apparent to any reader of this Magazine who closely scrutinizes its contents from month to month; and this large range does not include the many kinds of story which are good in their proper place, but which for one reason or another do not come within our scope of selection.
The wonder is that there are so many kinds that are good—good, that is, from our own editorial point of view, and as appealing to the varied tastes of our readers. It is only in an advanced stage of culture that this tendency to diversification becomes a passion. If we regard the magazine as a garden laid open for our study of the principle of natural selection, we shall observe from time to time the spontaneous emergence of new species, and then we shall note how inevitably each of a new kind of story, having once found place in the garden, begets others of that kind in hundreds of minds, and the editor knows better than any one else how pleasantly these others are inclined to a lodgment in the garden.
We find this development very beautifully illustrated if we take, for example, a single species, of which this Magazine has made something of a specialty, that of the child-story, which only recently emerged in connection with the study of child life and thought. What different types of stories it has brought forth under the very eyes of our readers from month to month! It is as if a new continent had been discovered. The children have been with us from the beginning, and we have always been telling them things—parables and fairy-tales and all kinds of instructive and entertaining lore; but they have had no deliverances for us—until suddenly, as the result of our growing habit of psychical research and subjective analysis, we came to an appreciation of what is going on spontaneously, beneath the surface, in a child's mind—and we watched and listened for intimations from this newly found kingdom of the Naïve.
The development in the case of other new species has had much of the same psychological interest, giving fresh interpretations of subjective moods and motives, and taking shape in studies and sketches of unusual dramatic interest.
The new order of stories in its limitless variety does not properly belong to what is called the "realistic" class. We are not invited to behold a picture of life, but to a deeper speculation, bringing us next to the very pulse of life and its implicit meanings. This kind of story is more spiritual simply because it is vital. We had a striking instance of it in "The Man of Flesh and Blood" in our May number, written by Susan Keating Glaspell. The particular species to which it belonged emerged in a story by the same author, entitled "In the Face of his Constituents," published in our October number, 1903. The vitality of these new species is shown by their displacement of the old weeds in the garden—the stories that disclosed sordid motives, morbid sentiments, exaggerated passions.
The love-story still remains, but it has emerged from its old chrysalis, and more than any other kind of story it has been diversified into numberless species, in each of which the primal romantic note is veiled, not so much heard as overheard. It has become first of all a story of life, under whose color, aspiration, and romance, in manifold situations, the old everlasting canticle is disguised, or if, in some lyrical stress, it breaks forth in its own proper strain, it gains a deeper significance from its impressive and varied investment.
We do not say that the short story has reached its best possibilities; in very few instances has it either fully met the demands of the most cultivated readers or successfully rivalled the greatest contemporary novels; but it has entered upon its noblest estate, and it has succeeded in piquing and holding an interest it has not yet wholly satisfied.
