The short-story does not demand the consistency in treatment of the long story, for there are not so many elements to marshal and direct properly, but the short-story must be original and varied in its themes, cleverly constructed, and lighted through and through with the glow of vivid imaginings. A single incident in daily life is caught as in a snap-shot exposure and held before the reader in such a manner that the impression of the whole is derived largely from suggestion. The single incident may be the turning-point in life history, as in _The Man Who Was_; it may be a mental surrender of habits fixed seemingly in indelible colors in the soul and a sudden, inflexible decision to be a man, as in the case of _Markheim;_ or it may be a gradual realization of the value of spiritual gifts, as Björnson has concisely presented it in his little story _The Father_. The aim of the short-story is always to present a cross-section of life in such a vivid manner that the importance of the incident becomes universal. Some short-stories are told with the definite end in view of telling a story for the sake of exploiting a plot. _The Cask of Amontillado_ is all action in comparison with _The Masque of the Red Death. The Gold-Bug_ sets for itself the task of solving a puzzle and possesses action from first to last. Other stories teach a moral. _Ethan Brand_ deals with the unpardonable sin, and _The Great Stone Face_ is our classic story in the field of ideals and their development. Hawthorne, above all writers, is most interested in ethical laws and moral development. Still other stories aim to portray character. Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman veraciously picture the faded-put womanhood in New England; Henry James and Björnson turn the x-rays of psychology and sociology on their characters; Stevenson follows with the precision of the tick of a watch the steps in Markheim's mental evolution. The types of the short-story are as varied as life itself. Addison, Lamb, Irving, Warner, and many others have used the story in their sketches and essays with wonderful effect. _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ is as impressive as any of Scott's tales. The allegory in _The Great Stone Face_ loses little or nothing when compared with Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. No better type of detective story has been written than the two short-stories, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_ and _The Purloined Letter_. Every emotion is subject to the call of the short-story. Humor with its expansive free air is not so well adapted to the short-story as is pathos. There is a sadness in the stories of Dickens, Garland, Page, Mrs. Freeman, Miss Jewett, Maupassant, Poe, and many others that runs the whole gamut from pleasing tenderness in _A Child's Dream of a Star_ to unutterable horror in _The Fall of the House of Usher_.