life; of history; of adventure;--the list could be prolonged. Sometimes
they are frankly tracts, sometimes acute analyses of the working of the
human mind.

So in the course of a little less than a century there has grown to
maturity a new kind of short narrative identified with American
Literature and the American people, exhibiting the foremost traits of
the American character, and written by a large number of authors of
different rank whose work, of a surprisingly high average of technical
excellence, appears chiefly in the magazines.

II

FORMS

Though the short-story has achieved a normal or general form of
straightforward narrative, as in Kipling's _An Habitation Enforced_ or
Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews' _Amici_, yet it exhibits many variations
in presentation. Sometimes it is a series of letters as in James' _A
Bundle of Letters_, sometimes a group of narrative, letters, and
telegrams as in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's _Marjorie Daw_; again, a letter
and a paragraph as in Henry Cuyler Bunner's _A Letter and a Paragraph_,
or a gathering of letters, telegrams, newspaper clippings, and
advertisements as Bunner and Matthews' _Documents in the Case_.

Again it may be told in the first person as in Stevenson's _Pavilion on
the Links_, or in the third person as in Kipling's _The Bridge
Builders_. Yet again it may be a conundrum as Stockton's famous _The
Lady or the Tiger_!

But besides the forms due to the manner of presentation there are other
forms due to the emphasis placed on one of the three elements of a
narrative---action, character, and setting. Consequently using this
principle of classification we have three forms which may be exemplified
by Kipling's _William the Conqueror_, wherein action is emphasized; his
_Tomb of His Ancestors_, wherein character is emphasized; and his _An
Error in the Fourth Dimension_, wherein setting is emphasized.

Using yet another principle of classification--material--we obtain:
stories of dramatic interest, that is, of some striking happening that
would hold the audience of a play in a highly excited state, as
Stevenson's _Sire de Maletroit's Door_; of love, as Bunner's _Love in
Old Cloathes_; of romantic adventure, as Kipling's _Man Who Would Be
King_; of terror, as Poe's _Pit and the Pendulum_; of the supernatural,
as Crawford's _The Upper Berth_; of humor, as humor, as Mary Raymond
Shipman Andrews' _A Good Samaritan_; of animals, as Kipling's
_Rikki-tikki-tavi_; of psych