been presented unblemished
because undisturbed; and this is an end unattainable by the novel." It
is to be noted that Poe roused interest in his effect by the method of
suspense, that is, by holding back the solution of the plot, by putting
off telling what the reader wants to know, though he continually
aggravates the desire to know by constant hints, the full significance
of which is only realized when the story is done. His stories are of two
main classes: what have been called stories of "impressionistic terror,"
that is, stories of great fear induced in a character by a mass of
rather vague and unusual incidents, such as _The Fall of the House of
Usher_ (1839) and _The Pit and the Pendulum_ (1843); and stories of
"ratiocination," that is, of the ingenious thinking out of a problem, as
_The Mystery of Marie Roget_ (1843). In the latter type he is the
originator of the detective story.

The writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne exhibit the next stage of
development. While lacking some of the technical excellence of Poe by
often not knowing how to begin or how to end a story, by sacrificing
economy or compression, yet he presented something new in making a story
of situation, that is, by putting a character in certain circumstances
and working out the results, as _The Birthmark_ (1843). His stories also
fall into two groups, the imaginative, like _Howe's Masquerade_ (1838),
and the moralizing introspective, or, as they have been called, the
"moral-philosophic," that is, stories which look within the human mind
and soul and deal with great questions of conduct, such as _The
Ambitious Guest_ (1837). Hawthorne was the descendant of Puritans, men
given to serious thought and sternly religious. It is this strain of his
inheritance which is evidenced in the second group. In all his writing
there is some outward symbol of the circumstances or the state of mind.
It is seen, for example, in _The Minister's Black Veil_ (1835).

In 1868 was published _Luck of Roaring Camp_, by Bret Harte. In this
story and those that immediately followed, the author advanced the
development of the short-story yet another step by introducing local
color. Local color means the peculiar customs, scenery, or surroundings
of any kind, which mark off one place from another. In a literary sense
he discovered California of the days of the early rush for gold.
Furthermore, he made the story more definite. He confined it to one
situation and one effect, thus a