Nothing but space is around me. I feel all hollow inside. Power and beauty and all things else flow through ... and out, like a sieve. My body is far below me, yet it will be taken care of. It does not stumble, nor make any clumsy, unnecessary movement. Finding it alone and forgotten, Rhythm catches it in her gentle arms. Slowly, softly, gently, Rhythm carries it along, the same that carries the deer so swiftly in the forest, the mountain sheep from ledge to ledge and over valleys, and that which waves the trees' long arms so gracefully.... The night moves on its way, the threat of storm is passed. I am back again--an untellable freshness has sweetened hair and clothing. I am all glowing inside. * * * * * This was done two years ago. There was a kind of dream story which she recently finished, gratifying the artistic sense entirely, but in a way that ruined it for the general reader. It was all new to her that there could possibly be two ways to regard a bit of workmanship. Five or six story-writers were present for the reading, and out of the fruits of that evening, we surely saw the lesser beauty give way before a greater. We forecasted the readers of the future, who would prefer the more spiritual, more challenging story texture and dénouement. There has always been The Few--glad to discover the real, answering to interior order and clarity, "straight grain,"--but the fact for enthusiasm now is that the world is being peopled with the awakened. These young moderns are recognising each other from day to day, pulling together for better social order, utilising the wisdom of the East, and the drive of the West--labouring in new paths, daring new leaps, working out philosophies as fresh and ancient as the dawn and, what is straighter to the point, demanding modern books, written out of an integrity to match their own.... Short story writing in America is less a trade and more of an art since Edward J. O'Brien, the poet, took his chair in the flow of the output and began to say which was which. There are a number of people in America who know a good short story when they see one; this is true among those who buy short stories, but editors cannot always buy what they want. A deal of mechanism in a magazine has to be oiled and energised by different kinds of minds from those who paint the pictures and write the tales. O'Brien knew both ends--also he knew that big, unobtrusive part of the market that looks long and pointedly for the real tale.