edge of the subject to picture the magazine editor as a kind of Cerberus to frighten away the literary aspirant, and as having a special spleen against genius. The kind of originality which he excludes is really not of the order which could be attributed to genius. The great writers of our time are not, as is often supposed, first repelled by the magazine editor and afterward courted by him when they have wrested success from fate in spite of his antagonism. On the contrary, our best writers received their first encouragement from magazine editors, and not a single instance can be adduced of a writer who has won a lasting place in literature and who in the beginning encountered editorial disfavor.
Our own experience in dealing with the contributors of two generations justifies this assertion, and it also enables us to add that in substantial value, artistic workmanship, and variety the short story has during this period steadily advanced—a development appreciated only by those who have given special attention to the subject. In a general way and quite unconsciously it is appreciated by magazine readers, for among these it is the readers of short stories who constitute the vast majority and who could not be held by mediocrity of talent.
It is difficult for us to conceive how the readers of fifty years ago could have tolerated the T. S. Arthur type of love-story, then so prevalent and so popular. What an endless variety of changes were rung upon the few notes of this romantic strain! And, after whatever obstacles proving that the course of true love never did run smooth, how happily they all ended! Such departures as there were from this theme took that other line of romance which leads into the region of the unusual and wonderful—ranging from the beautiful fairy-tale to stories of "haunts" and of other ghastly terrors of the night. Most of the stories of whatever kind were comparatively crude, appealing to a literary taste which was less cultivated than that of the present day, and also quite responsive to themes which, while in themselves of everlasting interest, were presented in aspects which would now prove intolerably wearisome because we have passed beyond them to phases less obvious, or beyond the themes themselves to others requiring a higher order of imaginative power.
Yet from the first there were some writers of short stories who have retained a place in literary remembrance and appreciation. Thus, before this Magazine was established, there was Poe, and, later, that frequent contributor to its earliest volumes, Fitz James O'Brien. These writers occupied a field quite apart from that of romantic love; but Donald G. Mitchell held somewhat closely to the old theme in his very poetic Dream Life and Reveries of a Bachelor. We can imagine what a relief to the strain of sentiment, then so generally accentuated in magazine literature, was afforded by John Ross Browne's descriptive articles in this Magazine of life in the new mining-camps, and by other like contributions of "Argonautic" association, which prepared the way for the striking fiction of Mark Twain and Bret Harte.
We do not infer from the wonderful development of the short story during the last twenty years that that period has therefore more abounded in writers of eminent genius engaged in this interesting field; we only claim that more and better short stories have been produced, that the number of those which have distinction far above mediocrity has been constantly increasing. Of exalted genius few examples are offered in any generation. Perhaps it is true that the immediately preceding generation has not had its fair share of newly emergent personalities thus phenomenally endowed, and that the glory of its literature is largely due to the fact that such stars as Mark Twain, James, Howells, Bret Harte, Miss Jewett, Mrs. Spofford, Miss Phelps, and Mary Wilkins still shone on, lending it their lustre; but even these have owed their full measure of prosperity to that increased culture essential to the deepest appreciation, and in response to the demands of this culture their own development has been stimulated to reach possibilities not otherwise attainable. Thus Bret Harte's latest stories were of more lasting value to our literature than his Luck of Roaring Camp. But later writers in the field, English and American,—Hewlett, Mrs. Rawson, Mrs. De-
