[Footnote 1: _The Philosophy of the Short-Story in Pen and Ink_, page 72. (Longmans, Green & Co., 1888.)] [Footnote 2: _Ibid._] [Footnote 3: _Materials of Fiction_, page 175. (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1912.)] Mr. Hamilton has also constructed another useful definition. He says: "The aim of a short-story is to produce a single narrative effect with the greatest economy of means that is consistent with the utmost emphasis."[4] [Footnote 4: _Materials of Fiction_, page 173. (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1912.)] However, years before, in 1842, in his celebrated review of Hawthorne's _Tales_[5] Edgar Allan Poe had laid down the same theory, in which he emphasizes what he elsewhere calls, after Schlegel, the unity or totality of interest, _i.e._ unity of impression, effect, and economy. Stevenson, too, has written critically of the short-story, laying stress on this essential unity, pointing out how each effect leads to the next, and how the end is part of the beginning.[6] [Footnote 5: _Graham's Magazine_, May, 1842.] [Footnote 6: _Vailima Letters_, I, page 147.] America may justly lay claim to this new species of short narrative. Beginning in the early part of the nineteenth century there had begun to appear in this country stories showing variations from the English type of story which "still bore upon it marks of its origin; it was either a hard, formal, didactic treatise, derived from the moral apologue or fable; or it was a sentimental love-tale derived from the artificial love-romance that followed the romance of chivalry."[7] The first one to stand out prominently is Washington Irving's _Rip Van Winkle_, which was published in 1820. This story, while more leisurely and less condensed than the completely developed form of the short-story, had the important element of humor, as well as freshness, grace, and restraint, nothing being said that should not be said. [Footnote 7: Krapp's _Irving's Tales of a Traveller_, etc. Introduction. (Scott, Foresman & Co.)]