The performance of this task has suggested the idea that, in romantic fiction, ours is the day of small things,--small as the diamond and the violet are small. Going freely through English literature to gather little classics, I have been surprised at finding so few that antedate the present century. Hawthorne, De Quincey, Poe, and Dr. Brown have put within the compass of a few pages as much plot and character, as much pathos, humor, human nature, metaphysical speculation, and dramatic effect, as commonly suffice for a full-length romance. The ponderous novel cannot be said to have had its day; but the indications are that it must soon cease to have more than its day. The work of art which, embodying a sacred principle or a living idea, condenses its plot, its moral, and its effective climax into the limits of a single sitting must, in an age of crowding books and rushing readers, possess a decisive advantage over the unwieldy conventional novel, with its caravan of characters and its long bewilderment of detail. The Ark of the Deluge may crumble on the mountain, but the Ark of the Covenant is borne by the people through all their wanderings, and enshrined in the temple when they rest. If the prevailing cast of these tales is sombre and tragic, it is not from any design on the part of the compiler; it is because, being true to nature and to human experience, they follow the inevitable course of human destiny. In the broad light of our daily life lie the superficial, the ephemeral, and the inessential; in its shadow lie God's solemn mysteries and man's profoundest studies. That in us which humor appeals to is selfish, and finds its limit within the narrow boundary of one's own being. That which pathos awakens is sacrificial in its tendency, and stretches a protecting arm, or offers a sympathetic heart, to all the world. NEW YORK, February, 1874. [Illustration] CONTENTS. PAGE ETHAN BRAND _Nathaniel Hawthorne_ 7 THE SWANS OF LIR _Gerald Griffin_ 30 A NIGHT IN A WORKHOUSE _James Greenwood_ 56 THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT _Bret Harte_ 85 THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY _Edward Everett Hale_ 101 FLIGHT OF A TARTAR TRIBE _Thomas De Quincey_ 137 [Illustration] NOTE. Thanks are due to the several American authors represented in this collection, and to their publishers, for the permission kindly given to use selections from their copyrighted works. [Illustration] ETHAN BRAND. BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble, when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of the forest.