Of course the short story, like all other fiction to be read, does not share the other difficulties of the acted drama--above all, the disadvantage which drags the acted drama down--the disadvantage of appealing to, at all events of having to give sops to, at one and the same moment, gallery and stalls: an audience so incongruous that it lies outside the power of Literature to weld it really together. In the contemporary theatre, in some of the very cleverest of our acted dramas, the characters are frequently doing, not what the man of intuition, and the man who remembers life, _knows_ that they would do, but that which they must do to conciliate the dress circle, to entertain the pit, to defer not too long the gentle chuckle with which the ‘average sensual man’ receives the assurance that it is a delusion to suppose our world contains any soul, even a woman’s soul, that is higher and purer than his. To such temptations the writer of the short story is not even exposed, if he be willing to conceive of his art upon exalted lines, to offer carefully the best of his reflection, in a form of durable and chosen grace, or, by a less conscious, perhaps, but not less fruitful, husbanding of his resources, to give us, sooner or later some first-hand study of human emotion, ‘gotten,’ as William Watson says, ‘of the immediate soul.’ But again, contrasting his fortunes with those of his brother, the dramatist, the writer of short stories must, even at the best, know himself denied the dramatist’s crowning advantage--which is the thrill of actual human presence. I have not presumed, except incidentally and by way of illustration, to sit in rapid judgment, and award impertinently blame or praise to the most or the least prominent of those who are writing short stories to-day. Even an occasional grappler with the difficulties of a task is not generally its best critic. He will criticise from the inside, now and then, and so, although you ought to have from him, now and again, at least--what I know, nevertheless, that _I_ may not have given--illuminating commentary--you cannot have final judgment. Of the art of Painting, where skill of hand and sense of colour count for much more than intellect, this is especially true. It is true, more or less, of Music--in spite of exceptions as notable as Schumann and Berlioz: almost perfect critics of the very art that they produced. It is true--though in a less degree--of creative Literature. We leave this point, to write down, before stopping, one word about _tendencies_.