I am made uneasy because I reason in this way: when Mr. Hergesheimer consciously is writing a short story to be printed next to advertising matter in some justly popular periodical, Mr. Hergesheimer, being rational and human, cannot but think of the subscribers to that popular periodical. I forget, I repeat, how many millions of them have been duly attested upon affidavit to exist, but certainly not many thousands of our fellow citizens can regard Mr. Hergesheimer at his best and purest with anything save bewildered abhorrence. So he must compromise,—subconsciously, I believe,—and must adapt his methods to the idiosyncrasies and limitations of his audience, very much as he probably refrains from addressing his cook in the heightened and consummated English of _San Cristóbal de la Habana_. The danger is not that Joseph Hergesheimer will lower his ideals, nor in anything alter what he wishes to communicate; but is the fact that he must attempt to transmit these things into the vernacular and into the orbits of thought of his enormous audience, with the immaculate motive of making his ideas comprehensible. He cannot, being rational and human, but by and by be tempted yet further to endeavor—as he has flagrantly endeavored in the tale called _Tol’able David_—to convey his wayside apprehensions of life via some such always acceptable vehicle as the prehistoric fairy-tale cliché of the scorned and ultimately victorious third champion. This is with a vengeance the pouring of new wine into a usage-battered and always brazen cup which spoils the brew.... Six of these stories, then, are beautifully written moral tales: although, to be sure, there is an alleviating seventh, in _The Flower of Spain_, which is a well-nigh perfect and a profoundly immoral work of art. I therefore put aside this volume with discomfort.... But I suspect that here the axiomatic mutual jealousy of all authors should be discounted. As an “outsider” in letters, I cannot be expected quite to view with equanimity the recent installation of Mr. Hergesheimer in the National Institute of Arts and Letters, that august body wherein the other representatives of creative literature are such approved masters as Mr. Nelson Lloyd and Mr. Robert W. Chambers and Mr. L. Frank Tooker. At this port, with appropriate ceremony, has the skipper of _The Happy End_ “arrived.” The fact has been formally recognized, by our most “solid” cultural element, that in artistic achievement Joseph Hergesheimer has but fifty living superiors, and only a hundred and ninety-nine equals at this moment resident in the United States: and I, who have not been tendered any such accolade, cannot but be aware of human twinges when Mr. Hergesheimer as a matter of course accepts this distinction.