If the first of these sources of interest is of paramount importance to him, then he will write a story in which plot is uppermost, in which the action is more significant than the portrayal of character or than setting, a story in which “things happen.” This Mr. H. C. Bunner has done in “A Sisterly Scheme.” Here, although the setting of the story is well and clearly given, although the two sisters and Mr. Morpeth are capitally portrayed, it is the _action_ of the story which holds our attention and our curiosity to the end. Indeed, the reader will easily see that no setting is given except that which is absolutely necessary and that the characters are almost entirely depicted by what they do or by what happens to them. In the story called “Two Friends” by M. Guy de Maupassant, however, character portrayal is uppermost. The plot action is relegated to little more than an incident; and yet M. Morissot and M. Sauvage, in their quiet dependence upon each other, in their common love of fishing, which makes them forget “the rest of the world,” and finally in their splendid and pathetic heroism are imperishable. Here, too, at the close is illustrated a device valuable to the writer of the character story in the contrast which is afforded by the picture of the Prussian officer, and which serves to accentuate the simplicity, the kindness, and the valor of the two little Frenchmen. And Mr. Francis Buzzell in “Lonely Places” has given us a story of almost pure setting. To be sure, there is action in plenty; to be sure, the characters of Abbie Snover and of Old Chris are clearly and beautifully portrayed; and yet the reader is every moment conscious that the action rises out of and because of the setting, that the environment has been and still is responsible for the careless cruelty of the children, for the attitude of their parents, and for the pathetic consequences which Old Chris and Abbie must undergo. These three stories, however, distinct as they are in their respective and single impressions and effects, all contain plot _in some measure_, even though the action may seem subordinate to the portrayal of character in one of them and to the depiction of the setting in another. Most stories, in fact, contain more or less of the plot element. Yet there are those narratives which possess too many of the features of a story to be called an incident or a sketch, and too little of the form which we have come to think necessary to the well-constructed short-story. Sometimes they are called stories without plot. Such a story is Miss Willa Cather’s “The Sculptor’s Funeral.” It is, in form, little more than an incident and the circumstances attendant upon it; and yet there are few stories anywhere that surpass it in brilliancy of characterization, in strength and vividness of setting, and in the consistent art of its atmosphere.