[Illustration: MARGARET DELAND’S HOME IN BOSTON] Mrs. Deland’s method is broader and her emotions of wider interest. She has painted one portrait which the whole country loves. Dr. Lavender has taken his place in the small group of imaginary Americans who are as real as historical Americans. He is a type dear to Americans, because his nature is sweet without a touch of weakness, his vision clear without hardness, his moral perception relentlessly keen but never divorced from pity and sympathy, and his humor fresh and abounding. And Mrs. Deland has also the gift of construction, and has written two or three novels which must be counted among our best fiction. [Illustration: MARGARET DELAND WRITING IN HER LIBRARY. HER DOG “ROUGH” SITS BY] No list of contemporary American writers of fiction would be complete without the names of F. Hopkinson Smith, John Fox, Jr., Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and Miss Mary Johnston. Mr. Smith has gained skill as a writer steadily as he has gained skill as a painter; and in the small group of stories which bear his name two or three are likely to be read for a long time to come. “The Fortunes of Oliver Horn” shows Mr. Smith’s art at his best, for it is art of the heart as well as of the brain and hand. His romance has permanent elements of human nature; idealism, loyalty, and love are the soul of it. Mr. Fox, who also finds his characters largely in the South, has drawn the picture of the primitive mountain types in the Kentucky hills with the charm which comes from great simplicity and from an intimate knowledge of the people he describes. Miss Johnston, who began by writing romances pure and simple, has dramatized the story of the Civil War in two able novels, “The Long Roll” and “Cease Firing.” It is not easy to characterize these stories in a phrase, nor is it necessary. They are written with a kind of quiet passion which gives the current sufficient volume to carry an enormous amount of history without sacrificing dramatic interest. [Illustration: F. HOPKINSON SMITH] [Illustration: MARY JOHNSTON] [Illustration: JOHN FOX, JR.] [Illustration: DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL] Dr. Mitchell, like Dr. Holmes, revealed himself in several different capacities, as physician, as poet, as essayist, and as story writer. His novels are characterized by inventiveness, by dexterity, by freshness of feeling. “The Adventures of François” is a capital piece of story-telling; while many people regard “Hugh Wynne” as the best semi-historical story which has appeared in this country. In other novels Dr. Mitchell showed his skill as a psychologist. _SUPPLEMENTARY READING_ [Illustration] A Study of Prose Fiction _Bliss Perry_ Criticism and Fiction _W. D. Howells_ Essays on Modern Novelists _William L. Phelps_ American Prose Masters (Cooper, Hawthorne, Emerson, Poe, Lowell and _W. C. Brownell_ Henry James) American Poetry and Fiction _C. F. Richardson_