he narrow limits of the short story. Ten thousand words is
probably the extreme limit of the type as a commercial possibility, and,
in a space so brief, if the chain of events is at all complicated or
lengthy, it is impossible to bring out all its nuances and implications.
Too many critics and writers seem to entertain the idea that the short
story is the result of compression, but emphatically that is not true.
The synopsis of previous chapters before an instalment of a serial novel
is an example of compression, and a most repellent one. A short story is
the result of its own inherent brevity. A naturally long story, it is
true, may be shortened materially by mere rhetorical compression, but it
cannot be rendered a short story thereby, for the short story develops
its fewer incidents with as much rhetorical elaboration as the novel or
romance develops its many happenings. The short story that is a short
story--such as Kipling's "Without Benefit of Clergy," Stevenson's
"Markheim," or Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher"--gives off no
impression of verbal bareness. The short story is a literary form, with
all the elaboration of expression that the term implies. Its brevity
results from careful selection of the incidents to be set forth, and not
from concise expression of an indiscriminate welter of incidents.

Undoubtedly the matter requires emphasis. Too much has been written and
said as to the necessity of compression in short story writing. If what
is meant is rhetorical compression, bare statement without verbal
elaboration, no such necessity exists. What is necessary is care in
making certain that the story is a short story, and care to relate
nothing not essential to its development.

The French type of short story in general, and Maupassant's work in
particular, are often cited to illustrate the need for compression. In
the first place, the essential genius of the French language is such
that in translations, to English or American apprehension, fully
elaborated statement often seems somewhat bare. Moreover, I cannot
admit that Maupassant's best work is equal in rounded artistry and
appeal to that of others who have chosen to write less barely and
mathematically. If compression means anything, it means squeezing
something into less space than it would normally occupy, which is not
artistry, but an attempt to do in execution the proper work of
conception and construction, to devise a story which can be given
adequat