the Art of Short Story

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HUMAN INTEREST. Holy Writ is the authority for the principle underlying the next phase of development. " He who conquereth his own soul is greater than he who taketh a city." And so the short story grew beyond an involved and pleasing chronicle of actions merely, and began to indicate an answer to the demand for the second of the cardinal virtues, Human Interest. As in all growth, the epochs overlap. Human Interest, at its first appearance far subordinate to plot, grew apace, until in time it became the predominant quality. Yet the love of a story for its own sake is one of the strongest hungers among mankind, and occupies so deep a place in the human heart that the most perfectly artisticstories are those in which plot and human interest supplement each other, rather than the ones in which one or the other quality predominates, as will be shown by examples presently. Two writers have been conspicuously successful with stories in which plot and human interest bear major and minor parts respectively, rather than co-ordinate parts,?Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Frank R. Stockton. Mar- jorie Dare contains one of the most cleverly constructed plots in light literature. The denouement is perfect. There is a delicate pleasing touch in every line, an underlying good humor. The characterization is admirable, particularly that of Marjorie. We have here one of the best brief examples of what makes a likable woman, in print,?for many continue to love her even after the dismal discovery that "there is no Marjorie Daw!" And light as the story is, there is a potenttheme,?the power of ideals. It is the ideal, in life or character, that moves the world. The Lady or the Tiger, the other example, has long enjoyed the distinction of being the best story of its kind ever written. Let us look ...