I write here of literature as an art. Since I mean to exclude, as not art, many books of undoubted importance and of wide appeal, I must attempt at least to defend a distinction that to certain readers will seem arbitrary. A book may tell us of a life we already know about, or of a life we as yet do not know; the pleasure it gives us will be of recognition or of curiosity satisfied. Of course no books fall absolutely into one or the other of such extremes, but it is fairly accurate to say that every successful book does give us information, a new experience, or brings back an old experience to recognize. Though both kinds of books may be equally well written, we are inclined to ask only instruction from the one kind, but permanent enjoyment from the other. One is a document in history or sociology, in ethics or psychology; the other, as I understand it, is a work of art. If our country has not proved a favorable birth-place for literary works of art, the reason probably lies in our history rather than in lack of able writers. Ours has always been, and still is, an unknown land; the reader of American works has primarily been looking for information about America. The early visitors from Europe wrote us up for the enlightenment of their friends at home, and since our world has changed rapidly, we still write up ourselves, for our own enlightenment. The too brief flourishing of literature as an art in New England was possible only because life there for one moment in our history was so stable that a considerable body of readers had much experience in common; having had their curiosity satisfied as to their own life, they could recognize it and reflect upon the literary portrait of it. But the New England moment in our literature proved an exception, and we are so accustomed now to read novels and poems, not as art, but as bulletins of information from the west, the northwest, the middle west or the south, that we are losing the sense of living art in the New England writers themselves, and are considering them more and more as documents in a past civilization. Since we have so great need of documents, I realize that I prejudice myself with many readers when I say that my chief interest is in literature as art—in the books which reflect the unchanging aspects of human experience, rather than in the reports of our temporary condition.