, The Short-story is the single effect,
complete and self-contained, while the Novel is of necessity broken into
a series of episodes. Thus the Short-story has, what the Novel cannot
have, the effect of "totality," as Poe called it, the unity of
impression. The Short-story is not only not a chapter out of a Novel, or
an incident or an episode extracted from a longer tale, but at its best
it impresses the reader with the belief that it would be spoiled if it
were made larger or if it were incorporated into a more elaborate work.
The difference in spirit and in form between the Lyric and the Epic is
scarcely greater than the difference between the Short-story and the
Novel; and "The Raven" and "How we brought the good news from Ghent to
Aix" are not more unlike "The Lady of the Lake" and "Paradise Lost," in
form and in spirit, than "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The Man without
a Country"--two typical Short-stories--are unlike "Vanity Fair" and "The
Heart of Midlothian,"--two typical Novels.

Another great difference between the Short-story and the Novel lies in
the fact that the Novel, nowadays at least, must be a love-tale, while
the Short-story need not deal with love at all. Although "Vanity Fair"
was a Novel without a hero, nearly every other Novel has a hero and a
heroine, and the novelist, however unwillingly, must concern himself in
their love-affairs. But the writer of Short-stories is under no bonds of
this sort. Of course he may tell a tale of love if he choose, and if
love enters into his tale naturally and to its enriching, but he need
not bother with love at all unless he please. Some of the best of
Short-stories are love-stories too,--Mr. Aldrich's "Margery Daw," for
instance, Mr. Stimpson's "Mrs. Knollys," Mr. Bunner's "Love in Old
Clothes;" but more of them are not love-stories at all. If we were to
pick out the ten best Short-stories, I think we should find that fewer
than half of them made any mention at all of love. In "The Snow Image"
and in "The Ambitious Guest," in "The Gold-Bug" and in "The Fall of the
House of Usher," in "My Double and how he Undid me," in
"Devil-Puzzlers," in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," in "Jean-ah
Poquelin," in "A Bundle of Letters," there is little or no mention of
the love of man for woman, which is the chief topic of conversation in a
Novel. While the Novel cannot get on without love, the Short-story can.
Since love is almost the only thing which will give interest to a lon