s not matter whether it is human or inhuman, or whether
it leaves you thinking deeply or radiantly but superficially pleased. Some
things are more easily done as short stories than others and more
abundantly done, but one of the many pleasures of short-story writing is
to achieve the impossible.

At any rate, that is the present writer's conception of the art of the
short story, as the jolly art of making something very bright and moving;
it may be horrible or pathetic or funny or beautiful or profoundly
illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from fifteen
to fifty minutes to read aloud. All the rest is just whatever invention
and imagination and the mood can give--a vision of buttered slides on a
busy day or of unprecedented worlds. In that spirit of miscellaneous
expectation these stories should be received. Each is intended to be a
thing by itself; and if it is not too ungrateful to kindly and
enterprising publishers, I would confess I would much prefer to see each
printed expensively alone, and left in a little brown-paper cover to lie
about a room against the needs of a quite casual curiosity. And I would
rather this volume were found in the bedrooms of convalescents and in
dentists' parlours and railway trains than in gentlemen's studies. I would
rather have it dipped in and dipped in again than read severely through.
Essentially it is a miscellany of inventions, many of which were very
pleasant to write; and its end is more than attained if some of them are
refreshing and agreeable to read. I have now re-read them all, and I am
glad to think I wrote them. I like them, but I cannot tell how much the
associations of old happinesses gives them a flavour for me. I make no
claims for them and no apology; they will be read as long as people read
them. Things written either live or die; unless it be for a place of
judgment upon Academic impostors, there is no apologetic intermediate
state.

I may add that I have tried to set a date to most of these stories, but
that they are not arranged in strictly chronological order.

H. G. WELLS.

CONTENTS.

I. THE JILTING OF JANE

II. THE CONE

III. THE STOLEN BACILLUS

IV. THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID

V. THE AVU OBSERVATORY

VI. AEPYORNIS ISLAND

VII. THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES.

VIII. THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS.

IX. THE MOTH

X. THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST

XI. THE STORY OF