ch makes or mars a man for good. The chief reason for this is
that the supreme crisis requires more elaborate preparation and
treatment than is possible in the short story. There may be a strong
tragic element which makes it seem that the denouement must be tragic,
but that is usually to obtain the effect of contrast. Yet the short
story may be a supreme crisis and a tragedy, as are Stevenson's
"Markheim," Hawthorne's "The Ambitious Guest"[11] and "The Birthmark,"
and many of Poe's tales; but these are stories of an exceptional type,
in which the whole life of the chief actor comes to a focus in the
crisis which makes the story.

The short story plot must be simple and complete. The popular idea of
a plot, derived from the requirements of the novel and the drama, is
that it should be a tangled skein of facts and fancies, which the
author shall further complicate in order to exhibit his deftness in
the final disentanglement. Such a plot is impossible for the short
story, which admits of no side issues and no second or under plot. It
must not be the synopsis of a novel, or the attempt to compress into
the tiny compass of the short story a complicated plot sufficient for
a novel, as are so many of the "Short Stories of the Day" now
published by newspapers. As nearly as possible it must deal with a
single person, in a single action, at a single place, in a single
time. More than any other modern form of literature, the short story
requires the observance of the old Greek unities of time, place and
action: its brevity and compactness do not admit of the proper
treatment of the changes wrought by the passage of time, the
influences of different scenes, or the complications resulting from
the interrelation of many characters of varied importance. If the
plot chosen requires the passage of ten years' time, if it involves a
shift of scene from New York to Timbuctoo, or if it introduces two or
three sets of characters, it may by some miracle of ingenuity make a
readable story, but it will never be a model one. In "The Ambitious
Guest" the time is less than three hours, the place is a single room,
and the action is the development of the guest's ambition.

Yet the plot is only relatively important. It must always be present or
there is no story; but once there it takes second place. The short story
is not written to exploit the plot, however clever that may be, but to
give a glimpse of real life; and the plot is only a means to t