The Canadian species of short story is distinguished by a high artistic unity of structure and effect and in that respect reflects the influence of Poe upon all modern short story writing, but there is this difference, that it achieves its unity of effect and its dramatic interest not by mechanically constructed climaxes but by developments arising out of the inherent traits and dispositions of the personages of the story. Its basis is the solid rock of character. The Canadian short story as a distinctive type does not present the excessively climactic plot; nevertheless, it is more truly a real story than either the plot story of the American and French writers or the fine psychological situations of successful English story writers. As we see it, this peculiar quality of the Canadian short story is rooted in some quality of Canadian nationality. No Canadian writer can be said to have originated the method. Each appears to evolve some modification of it particularly adapted to his own field. _Old Man Savarin and Other Tales_, by Edward William Thomson (1895) contains a number of stories of Canadian life differing widely in emotional interest. There is the near burlesque of _Old Man Savarin_, with the incident of the fist fight which lasted for four hours, although the two combatants never reached within striking distance of each other all that time; _McGrath’s Bad Night_ portrays a pathetic picture of a family on the verge of starvation, to which is added the greater pathos of the breakdown of a man’s principles of honesty; _The Privilege of the Limits_, wherein the author captures and presents effectively the dry, pawky humor of the Scot; the sorrowful dillusionment of youthful imagination in _The Shining Cross of Rigaud_; superstitious terror overcome by plain common sense in _Red Headed Windego_. The stories with Eastern Ontario and Quebec for their setting show a loving intimacy and understanding of the plain people—the habitant, the river driver, the lumberman, the farmer; and the author is at his best in his delineation of the Glengarry Scot or the Quebec habitant. Thomson is scarcely a stylist. There is a freedom, even looseness, in his story structure, and he employs sometimes the device of introducing a narrator for his tale. But in his stories of the Canadian type and setting his warm friendliness for his characters radiates a glow of enthusiasm that captures and holds the reader. Not all Thomson’s stories, however, are of this type—in _Petherick’s Peril_, there is an approach to the horror tale of Poe; and in _The Swartz Diamond_ there is the trap-springing device of the surprise ending, while _Boss of the World_ is an example of the ‘tall story’ which produces its humor by the exaggeration of its ideas—these stories we surmise to be the result of influences which surrounded E. W. Thomson in his editorial offices in a Boston magazine publishing firm.