ure of fixity and stability at the cost of his power of motion.
One may with justification surmise that the author was influenced, in writing this essay, by lively recollections of recent encounters with the writers of raw naturalistic fiction and their journalistic defenders and partisans.
Mr. Sherman, while impressed by the literary craftsmanship of the new school of "devastators," was disposed to remonstrate against certain tendencies in their philosophy which impressed him as nihilistic, and to protest against their vision of life as inadequate. The new party retaliated by pointedly remarking that his criticism suffered from a lack of sympathy for young writers. Perhaps he began to wonder whether there was not some justice in that remark. Possibly he began to sympathize a little with a neglected young element in himself. It was at the point when the unfriendly voices were loudest with the derisive cry of "moralist" that Mr. Sherman wrote this essay,
