Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) is chiefly known as the author of the short story, _The Man Without a Country_ (December, 1863, _Atlantic Monthly_), but his venture in the comic vein, _My Double; and How He Undid Me_ (September, 1859, _Atlantic Monthly_), is equally worthy of appreciation. It was his first published story of importance. Other noteworthy stories of his are: _The Brick Moon_ (October, November and December, 1869, _Atlantic Monthly_), _Life in the Brick Moon_ (February, 1870, _Atlantic Monthly_), and _Susan’s Escort_ (May, 1890, _Harper’s Magazine_). His chief volumes of short stories are: _The Man Without a Country, and Other Tales_ (1868); _The Brick Moon, and Other Stories_ (1873); _Crusoe in New York, and Other Tales_ (1880); and _Susan’s Escort, and Others_ (1897). The stories by Hale which have made his fame all show ability of no mean order; but they are characterized by invention and ingenuity rather than by suffusing imagination. There is not much homogeneity about Hale’s work. Almost any two stories of his read as if they might have been written by different authors. For the time being perhaps this is an advantage—his stories charm by their novelty and individuality. In the long run, however, this proves rather a handicap. True individuality, in literature as in the other arts, consists not in “being different” on different occasions—in different works—so much as in being _samely_ different from other writers; in being _consistently_ one’s self, rather than diffusedly various selves. This does not lessen the value of particular stories, of course. It merely injures Hale’s fame as a whole. Perhaps some will chiefly feel not so much that his stories are different among themselves, but that they are not strongly anything—anybody’s—in particular, that they lack strong personality. The pathway to fame is strewn with stray exhibitions of talent. Apart from his purely literary productions, Hale was one of the large moral forces of his time, through “uplift” both in speech and the written word.