Wilbur Daniel Steele and Katharine Fullerton Gerould are still at the head of their craft. But during the past year the ten published stories by Maxwell Struthers Burt and Charles Caldwell Dobie seem to promise a future in our literature of equal importance to the later work of these writers. Sherwood Anderson and Waldo Frank emerge as writers with a great deal of importance to say, although they have not yet fully mastered the art of saying it. The three new short story writers who show most promise are Gertrude Nafe and Thomas Beer, whose first stories appeared in the Century Magazine during 1917, and Elizabeth Stead Taber, whose story, "The Scar," when it appeared in the Seven Arts, attracted much favorable comment. Edwina Stanton Babcock and Lee Foster Hartman have both published memorable stories, and "The Interval," which was Vincent O'Sullivan's sole contribution to an American periodical during 1917, compels us to wonder why an artist, for whom men of such widely different temperaments as Lionel Johnson, Remy de Gourmont, and Edward Garnett had high critical esteem, finds the American public so indifferent to his art. Addison Lewis has published during the past year a series of stories in Reedy's Mirror which have more of O. Henry's magic than the thousand writers who have endeavored to imitate him to the everlasting injury of American literature. Frederick Stuart Greene, in "The Bunker Mouse" and "Molly McGuire, Fourteen," shows marked literary development, and reinforces my belief that in him we have an important new story-teller. I suppose the best war story of the year is "The Flying Teuton," by Alice Brown, soon to be reprinted in book form. I do not know whether it is an effect of the war or not, but during 1917, even more than during 1916, American magazines have been almost absolutely devoid of humor. Save for Irvin S. Cobb, on whom the mantle of Mark Twain has surely fallen, and for Seumas O'Brien, whom Mr. Dooley must envy, I have found American fiction to be sufficiently solemn and imperturbable. I need not emphasize again the fine art of Fannie Hurst. Two years ago Mr. Howells stated more truly than I can the significance of her work. Comparing her with two other contemporaries, he wrote: "Miss Fannie Hurst shows the same artistic quality, the same instinct for reality, the same confident recognition of the superficial cheapness and commonness of the stuff she handles; but in her stories she also attests the right to be named with them for the gift of penetrating to the heart of life. No one with the love of the grotesque which is the American portion of the human tastes or passions, can fail of his joy in the play of the obvious traits and motives of her Hebrew comedy, but he will fail of something precious if he does not sound the depths of true and beautiful feeling which underlies the comedy." A similar distinction marks Edna Ferber's story entitled "The Gay Old Dog."