It is to be noted as a curious coincidence that there is no exact word in English to designate either _vers de société_ or the Short-story, and yet in no language are there better _vers de société_ or Short-stories than in English. It may be remarked also that there is a certain likeness between _vers de société_ and Short-stories: for one thing, both seem easy and are hard to write. And the typical qualifications of each may apply with almost equal force to the other: _vers de société_ should reveal compression, ingenuity, and originality, and Short-stories should have brevity and brilliancy. In no class of writing are neatness of construction and polish of execution more needed than in the writing of _vers de société_ and of Short-stories. The writer of Short-stories must have the sense of form, which Mr. Lathrop has called "the highest and last attribute of a creative writer." The construction must be logical, adequate, harmonious. Here is the weak spot in Mr. Bishop's "One of the Thirty Pieces," the fundamental idea of which has extraordinary strength perhaps not fully developed in the story. But others of Mr. Bishop's stories--"The Battle of Bunkerloo," for instance--are admirable in all ways, conception and execution having an even excellence. Again, Mr. Hugh Conway's "Daughter of the Stars" is a Short-story which fails from sheer deficiency of style: here is one of the very finest Short-story ideas ever given to mortal man, but the handling is at best barely sufficient. To do justice to the conception would task the execution of a poet. We can merely wonder what the tale would have been had it occurred to Hawthorne, to Poe, or to Théophile Gautier. An idea logically developed by one possessing the sense of form and the gift of style is what we look for in the Short-story.