Maupassant was a keen observer, possessed an excellent but not lofty imagination, and never asserted a philosophy of life. His writings are all interesting, terse, precise, and truthful, but lack the glow that comes with a sympathetic and spiritual outlook on life. Zola says of him: "…. a Latin of good, clear, solid head, a maker of beautiful sentences shining like gold…." He chooses a single incident, a few characteristics and then moulds them into a compact story. Nine-tenths of his stories deal with selfishness and hypocrisy. Tolstoi wrote: "Maupassant possessed genius, that gift of attention revealing in the objects and facts of life properties not perceived by others; he possessed a beautiful form of expression, uttering clearly, simply, and with charm what he wished to say; and he possessed also the merit of sincerity, without which a work of art produces no effect; that is he did not merely pretend to love or hate, but did indeed love or hate what he described." GENERAL REFERENCES _Inquiries and Opinions_, Brander Matthews. "A Criticism," _Outlook_, 88:973-976. "Greatest Short Story Writer that Ever Lived," _Current Literature_, 42:636-638. COLLATERAL READINGS _Happiness_ (Odd Number), Guy de Maupassant. _The Wolf_, Guy de Maupassant. _La Mère Sauvage_, Guy de Maupassant. _The Confession_, Guy de Maupassant. _On the Journey_, Guy de Maupassant. _The Beggar_, Guy de Maupassant. _A Ghost_, Guy de Maupassant. _Little Soldier_, Guy de Maupassant. _The Wreck_, Guy de Maupassant. _The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant. _A Note of Scarlet_, Ruth Stuart. _Expiation_, Octave Thanet. _Fagan_, Rowland Thomas. _La Grande Bretêche_ ("Jessup and Canby"), Honoré de Balzac. THE MAN WHO WAS[1] _By Rudyard Kipling (1865- )_ Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks his shirt in. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of Western peoples, instead of the most westerly of Easterns, that he becomes a racial anomaly[2] extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next.