Kansas University Weekly.
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will be like the recovery from a debauch. Modern invention and progress has put the world of events at the author's disposal and we daily see the abuse of this privilege. Shall the short story mean degredation and ruin for our literature? No. For good literature will live; though a certain class of people has sprung up amongst us (or is it a mania that has attacked every one) whom you might talk to an entire evening without imagining that they had read a book until they term some of the newest books, not over six months out as "old fossils."
Another trait that the short story has fostered in the manner of scene and events is the spirit of the occult. The minds of the present generation of readers seem to be bewitched to a deep and very precocious passion for mediaevel and black letter literature and occult philosophy. These states of affairs are not new by any means, but the great demand has exceeded the supply and as a result the story writers have met this call with imitations. Unlike the old mystic tales, these new ones have a latter way of doing business. The imagination is not taken by assault but merely cheated.
The great demand for light reading has also brought into prominence a fault that has existed for years. It has caused every striking or otherwise interesting event to be taken as a foundation for a story. The true author forms his plot (or should appear to do so) by placing his characters and scene and causing the plot to seem to unfold itself naturally. But in many of the stories of to day (and yesterday also, for that matter) events and incidents stand pointing like finger-boards towards one main point or climax. So much machine work towards an end often cause the author to make the mistake of assigning inadequate causes to important results. The end of the story may however be an open secret which does not dull the edge of a delightful reader's relish.
In ending allow me to state that there is a class of modern writers who prefer that the richness of their culture should be judged by the perfection of their style rather than by their wealth of literary allusions and the scope of their
insight or imagination. For them the present is a struggle along a fine line of righteous but narrow conditions. Their fate rests on tomorrow; but the story, and the short story especially, is the life of the present embodiment of fiction, and probably literature. And, as long as necessity does not drive its author to lower depths there to soil him, and render itself powerless to produce the finer shades, it will live. It may be realistic in its incidents and sentiments without becoming vulgar or unwholesome in tone or it may stretch the cords of truth to give us surprises cleverly managed; but beyond these it must not go. The sentiment may suffer (and has) and become tainted, but let the action, the life of the story, become indecent and the story will at once be branded as 'trash.' We say the novel appeals to all classes. Does the short story? It does; but there are different kinds of novels and different kinds of short stories. When you are taught fiction as you are taught mathematics and languages, bad fiction will have no attraction for you.
ROBT. E. EVERETT.
Over the Wave.
Over the wide wave wearily winging The wee bird came;
Bearing nor plume nor note of singing,
Nor even a name.
Yet from the sky was the black fear driven,
Despair from the wave.
Hearts beat again with the new hope given,
Laughed at the grave.
Hope came the wee bird wearily bringing Over the wave. —N.N.T.
At one of our state institutions of learning the college paper uses such jokes as these, and the editor still lives to do more:
Sunday School Teacher—"What does A. D. mean?"
Pupil一“I don't know, but I guess it means after dinner."
Teacher.—"What was the Spanish Armada?"
Student.—"It was a big ship seven miles wide and thirty miles long."