When we read the roll of American novelists, we see that nearly all of them began as writers of Short-stories.  Some of them, Mr. Bret Harte, for instance, and Mr. Edward Everett Hale, never got any farther, or, at least, if they wrote novels, their novels did not receive the full artistic appreciation and popular approval bestowed on their Short-stories.  Even Mr. Cable’s “Grandissimes” has not made his readers forget his “Jean-ah Poquelin,” nor has Mr. Aldrich’s “Queen of Sheba,” charming as she was, driven from our memory his “Margery Daw,” as delightful and as captivating as that other non-existent heroine, Mr. Austin Dobson’s “Dorothy.”  Mrs. Burnett put forth one volume of Short-stories and Miss Woolson two before they attempted the more sustained flight of the full-fledged Novel.  The same may be said of Miss Jewett, of Mr. Craddock, and of Mr. Boyesen.  Mr. Bishop and Mr. Lathrop and Mr. Julian Hawthorne wrote Short-stories before they wrote novels.  Mr. Henry James has never gathered into a book from the back-numbers of magazines the half of his earlier efforts.

In these references to the American magazine I believe I have suggested the real reason of the superiority of the American Short-stories over the English.  It is not only that the eye of patriotism may detect more fantasy, more humor, a finer feeling for art, in these younger United States, but there is a more emphatic and material reason for the American proficiency.  There is in the United States a demand for Short-stories which does not exist in Great Britain, or at any rate not in the same degree.  The Short-story is of very great importance to the American magazine.  But in the British magazine the serial Novel is the one thing of consequence, and all else is termed “padding.”  In England the writer of three-volume Novels is the best paid of literary laborers.  So in England whoever has the gift of story-telling is strongly tempted not to essay the difficult art of writing Short-stories, for which he will receive only an inadequate reward; and he is as strongly tempted to write a long story which may serve first as a serial and afterward as a three-volume Novel.  The result of this temptation is seen in the fact that there is not a single English novelist whose reputation has been materially assisted by the Short-stories he has written.  More than once in the United States a single Short-story has made a man known, but in Great Britain such an event is wellnigh impossible.  The disastrous effect on narrative art of the desire to distend every subject to the three-volume limit has been dwelt on unceasingly by English critics.