Of Stevenson's short stories the finest are _The Pavilion on the Links_, a tale of Sicilian vengeance and English love that is full of haunting mystery and the deadly fear of unknown assassins; _Markheim_, a brilliant example of this author's skill in laying bare the conflict of a soul with evil and its ultimate triumph; _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_, a vivid picture of the cruelty and the autocratic power of a great French noble of the fifteenth century, and _A Lodging for the Night_, a remarkable defense of his life by the vagabond poet, Villon. Other short stories by Stevenson are worth careful study, but if you like these I have mentioned you will need no guide to those which strike your fancy. The vogue of Stevenson's essays will last as long as that of his romances; for he excelled in this literary art of putting his personality into familiar talks with his reader. He ranks with Lamb and Thackeray, Washington Irving and Donald G. Mitchell. Read those fine short sermons, _Pulvis et Umbra_ and _Aes Triplex_, the latter with its eloquent picture of sudden death in the fulness of power which was realized in Stevenson's own fate. Read _Books Which Have Influenced Me_, _A Gossip on Romance_ and _Talk and Talkers_. They are unsurpassed for thought and feeling and for brilliancy of style. But above everything looms the man himself--a chronic invalid, who might well have pleaded his weakness and constant pains as an excuse for idleness and railings against fate. Stoic courage in the strong is a virtue, but how much greater the cheerful courage that laughs at sickness and pain! Stevenson writing in a sickbed stories and essays that help one to endure the blows of fate is a spectacle such as this world has few to offer. So the man's life and work have come to be a constant inspiration to those who are faint-hearted, a call to arms of all one's courage and devotion. THOMAS HARDY AND HIS TRAGIC TALES OF WESSEX GREATEST LIVING WRITER OF ENGLISH FICTION--BECAUSE OF RESENTMENT OF HARSH CRITICISMS THE PROSE MASTER TURNS TO VERSE. No one will question the assertion that Thomas Hardy is the greatest living English writer of fiction, and the pity of it is that a man with so splendid an equipment for writing novels of the first rank should have failed for many years to give the world any work in the special field in which he is an acknowledged master. Hardy seems to have revolted from certain harsh criticism of his last novel, _Jude the Obscure_, and to have determined that he would write no more fiction for an unappreciative world. So he has turned to the writing of verse, in which he barely takes second rank. It is one of the tragedies of literature to think of a man of Hardy's rank as a novelist, who might give the world a second _Tess_ or _The Return of the Native_, contenting himself with a ponderous poem like _The Dynasts_, or wasting his powers on minor poems containing no real poetry.