Of course, our public like stories of the far places, of the West, both old and new, of the North and the Tropics. Yet, even to these there are some strange exceptions such as the question of remoteness from the reader’s understanding. Miles are nothing to the author or to the reader of the printed page, but unless the author succeeds in making the reader feel his locality, the sense of remoteness creeps in and the story fails. Naturally, with this small world and the fairly limited number of situations possible to a human being in adventure, variety becomes a very desirable thing with us--variety, remember, within our field. The public that reads _Short Stories_ likes mystery stories. That in itself is a broad field and includes the tales of the tracking down of the perpetrators of crime--detective stories. We have mighty few hard and fast rules, but we never use a story in which we make crime and criminals heroic. If the hero of a story is a burglar, we want the story to show his redemption, the failure of crime with its ultimate punishment, or we want his actions within the story to be for a laudable purpose. Our attitude may best be summed up by the phrase, “the effect on the young.” We want no story which will have an evil effect on any reader. Mystery stories tend to run along conventional lines. We would like some variety there. The playwrights have accomplished something new and thrilling in pieces such as: “The Unknown Purple,” “The 13th Chair,” “The Alibi” with excellent results. Why cannot some equally ingenious writers work out mystery tales as far from the ordinary murder or jewel mysteries as these? And humor! Oh, give us humor! Not too subtle, nor too rough. But give us a laugh. Human interest stories too. Business stories and the sports interest our readers. They are fairly scarce, the good ones, so we are always on the lookout for them. _Short Stories_, like its contemporaries, including _The Saturday Evening Post_, was created by a reading public’s _demand_. Therefore, with the exception of the purely love stories and speaking quite generally, any story that would hit _The Saturday Evening Post_ would hit us. Many and many a writer appearing regularly in that great weekly has found himself through the medium of _Short Stories_ and similar magazines. The love theme is desirable in our field. Our public, we believe, likes it, but only as a normal motive in a plot. We do not use love stories, as such, but love naturally enters into and strengthens any story, adventure, mystery, business, humor, sports, or what not. We are not squeamish, yet we never forget that phrase, “the influence on the young.” We do not want to print any story that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Our public do not want nor expect that in _Short Stories_. Hence, the so-called sex story is not for us.