ican novelists, do not always dwell together in
unity. The subject of the eulogy is the chief of those who have come to
be known as the International Novelists, and he was praised because he
had invented and made possible a fifth plot. Hitherto, declared the
eulogist, only four terminations of a novel have been known to the most
enthusiastic and untiring student of fiction. First, they are married;
or, second, she marries some one else; or, thirdly, he marries some one
else; or, fourthly, and lastly, she dies. Now, continued the panegyrist,
a fifth termination has been shown to be practicable: they are not
married, she does not die, he does not die, and nothing happens at all.
As a Short-story need not be a love-story, it is of no consequence at
all whether they marry or die; but a Short-story in which nothing
happens at all is an absolute impossibility.

Perhaps the difference between a Short-story and a Sketch can best be
indicated by saying that, while a Sketch may be still-life, in a
Short-story something always happens. A Sketch may be an outline of
character, or even a picture of a mood of mind, but in a Short-story
there must be something done, there must be an action. Yet the
distinction, like that between the Novel and the Romance, is no longer
of vital importance. In the preface to "The House of the Seven Gables,"
Hawthorne sets forth the difference between the Novel and the Romance,
and claims for himself the privileges of the romancer. Mr. Henry James
fails to see this difference. The fact is, that the Short-story and the
Sketch, the Novel and the Romance, melt and merge one into the other,
and no man may mete the boundaries of each, though their extremes lie
far apart. With the more complete understanding of the principle of
development and evolution in literary art, as in physical nature, we see
the futility of a strict and rigid classification into precisely defined
genera and species. All that it is needful for us to remark now is that
the Short-story has limitless possibilities: it may be as realistic as
the most prosaic novel, or as fantastic as the most ethereal romance.

As a touch of fantasy, however slight, is a most welcome ingredient in a
Short-story, and as the American takes more thought of things unseen
than the Englishman, we may have here an incomplete explanation of the
superiority of the American Short-story over the English. "John Bull has
suffered the idea of the Invisible to be very muc