ed by the way, the short-story fulfils
the three false unities of the French classic drama: it shows one
action, in one place, on one day. A short-story deals with a single
character, a single event, a single emotion, or the series of emotions
called forth by a single situation. Poe's paradox that a poem cannot
greatly exceed a hundred lines in length under penalty of ceasing to
be one poem and breaking into a string of poems, may serve to suggest
the precise difference between the short-story and the novel. 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.

"Of a truth, 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....

"In fact, it may be said that no one has ever succeeded as a writer of
short-stories who had not ingenuity, originality, and compression; and
that most of those who have succeeded in this line had also the touch
of fantasy."

On the basis of these theories, the present writer essayed a few
years ago to formulate within a single sentence a definition of the
short-story. Thus: _The aim of a short-story is to produce a single
narrative effect with the greatest economy of means that is consistent
with the utmost emphasis._[5]

[Footnote 5: This definition was printed first in the _Bookman_ for
February, 1904, and later in the _Reader_ for February, 1906.]

Because of its succinctness, this sentence needs a little explanation.
A narrative effect necessarily involves the three elements of action,
characters, and setting. In aiming to produce a narrative effect, the
short-story, therefore, differs from the sketch, which may concern
itself with only one of these elements, without involving the other
two. The sketch most often deals with character or setting divested of
the element of action; but in the short-story something has to happen.
In this regard, the short-story is related more closely to the novel
than to the sketch. But although in the novel any two, or all three,
of the narrative elements may be so intimately interrelated that no
one of them stands out clearly from t