ion, and its fiction is mainly of the inferior sort
with which boys and men beguile their leisure.

In fact the newspapers prefer to remain newspapers, at least in quality
if not in form; and I heard a story the other day from a charming young
writer of his experience with them, which may have some instruction for
the magazines that less wisely aim to become newspapers. He said that
when he carried his work to the editors they struck out what he thought
the best of it, because it was what they called magaziny; not
contemptuously, but with an instinctive sense of what their readers
wanted of them, and did not want. It was apparent that they did not
want literary art, or even the appearance of it; they wanted their
effects primary; they wanted their emotions raw, or at least saignantes
from the joint of fact, and not prepared by the fancy or the taste.

The syndicate has no doubt advanced the prosperity of the short story
by increasing the demand for it. We Americans had already done pretty
well in that kind, for there was already a great demand for the short
story in the magazines; but the syndicate of Sunday editions
particularly cultivated it, and made it very paying. I have heard that
some short-story writers made the syndicate pay more for their wares
than they got from the magazines for them, considering that the
magazine publication could enhance their reputation, but the Sunday
edition could do nothing for it. They may have been right or not in
this; I will not undertake to say, but that was the business view of
the case with them.

In spite of the fact that short stories when gathered into a volume and
republished would not sell so well as a novel, the short story
flourished, and its success in the periodicals began to be felt in the
book trade: volumes of short stories suddenly began to sell. But now
again, it is said the bottom has dropped out, and they do not sell, and
their adversity in book form threatens to affect them in the magazines;
an editor told me the other day that he had more short stories than he
knew what to do with; and I was not offering him a short story of my
own, either.

A permanent decline in the market for a kind of literary art which we
have excelled in, or if we have not excelled, have done some of our
most exquisite work, would be a pity.

There are other sorts of light literature once greatly in demand, but
now apparently no longer desired by editors, who ought to know what