allied writer and writings are is very well
stated by Hamilton W. Mabie in the _Book-Buyer_ for June, 1902, "His
talk had much of the quality of his writing; it was full of quaint
conceits, whimsicalities, impossible suggestions offered with perfect
gravity. He was always perfectly natural; he never attempted to live
up to his part; in talk, at least, he never forced the note. His
attitude toward himself was slightly tinged with humor, and he knew
how to foil easily and pleasantly too great a pressure of praise."

His tales are extravagantly impossible but extremely realistic in
effect, filled with humorous situations and singular plots, and
peopled with eccentric characters that afford amusement on every page.
His most successful writing is done when he explains contrivances upon
which his story depends. He is an original and inventive expert
juggler who moves with careless ease to the most effective ends. His
characters are little more than pieces of mechanism that act when he
pulls the string. They have little emotion and even in their
love-making they show their emotion mostly for the sake of the
reader's amusement. His negro characters are exceptions to his general
treatment and are true to life. He inveigles the reader into believing
the most extravagant incidents by having a reliable witness narrate
them.

Stockton never stoops to the burlesque, cynic, or vulgar phases of
life to secure amusement. He is grotesque and droll in his manner, and
above all always restrained. His literary life is full of sprites and
gnomes that frolic before young children and once before mature
people. _The Griffin and the Minor Canon_ is a beautiful fairy story
lifted from childhood's thought and diction into a mature realm. His
humor is plain and simple, cool and keenly calculating. A friendly
critic has said of one of his stories, "With a gentle, ceaseless
murmur of amusement, and a flickering twinkle of smiles, the story
moves steadily on in the calm triumph of its assured and unassailable
absurdity, to its logical and indisputable impossibility." This
observation is very largely true of all his stories.

GENERAL REFERENCES

_Frank R. Stockton_, A.T.Q. Couch.

"Stockton's Method of Working," _Current Literature_, 32:495.

"Criticism," _Atheneum_, 1:532.

"Estimate," _Harper's Weekly_, 46:555.

COLLATERAL READINGS

_The Beeman of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales_, Frank R. Stockton.

_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. St