no less red-handed because of the indelible stain we succeed in hiding so neatly under our own well-fitting glove.
One can afford carelessly to ignore the cheap jibes of those who insist on the obvious and meaningless taunt: "Why don't you write as you say you would have other American fictionists write?" with the equally obvious retort that, if any author really succeeded in writing the book of which he dreamed, it would mean no more than that his dream was a tawdry, worthless thing.
It is enough for me, at least, to know what I wish to embody in my own writings, no matter how far short of success I may fall in the endeavour, or how certainly my adherence to my own beliefs may cost me the interest of a public in whose commendation I would find a healthy, human enjoyment, provided always, I could have it without compromise.
I believe, then, that fiction is something vastly more than a medium of amusement. I believe it has been, in all countries and ages, that art best fitted to interpret life to the human beings who share that life. I think it can be and should be made a revelation of man's emotion, impulse and character. To me, it seems that any and every phase of human life, any and every choice of scene and dramatis personae is worthy of the fictionist's study, and his only inflexible obligation is to paint life as he sees it instead of sophisticating his tints and outlines to portray what he would prefer seeing, or to depict what he thinks his readers would like to see, or, worst of all, to prove some pet thesis. I hold it as fundamental that, if one can give an understanding picture of any phase of life, no matter how trivial it may be intrinsically, he has contributed something to the comprehension of the most important of all things—Men and Women.
By his very choice of fiction as his mode of expression, the author is committed to some sense of form. He has acknowl-
