In all of these stories, place, time, and occupation are background and not theme. In other words, A Derelict belongs in group two with Mr. Allen's Old King Solomon of Kentucky. Mr. Garland's The Spirit of Sweetwater is a story of the regenerating power of love, and belongs to group three. However, in Pere Raphael, the sequel to "Posson Jone'," Mr. Cable seems to have had in mind no other theme than the reproduction of a phase of life in a particular place at a particular time-the New Orleans of 1820. It properly belongs to group four.

5. The Delineation of Character. The characters pictured in stories whose main purpose is character portrayal are in most cases in some way unusual, striking, odd, or peculiar. Examples of short stories having character portrayal as the objective point—the theme - may be seen in Mr. Quiller-Couch's The Drawn Blind; in Ruth McEnery Stuart's Napoleon Jackson, and in Thomas Bailey Aldrich's Quite So. Since, however, the peculiarity in the character of Cordelia Pinsent in The Drawn Blind is the inability to believe her son capable of doing wrong (a characteristic of mothers generally), the story might be put into group three. Mr. Quiller-Couch seems, however, to have been more interested in showing how the confidence in the integrity of her son was exhibited by this particular mother, than in the elucidation of the general idea that mothers fail to see the short-comings of their sons and daughters.

6. The Development or Disintegration of Character Under the Stress of Some Emotion or Circumstance. This group will overlap both group five and group three, but many examples may be cited in which

the main purpose of the author was to show development or breaking down of character under emotional stress. Hawthorne's The Great Stone Face shows development; De Maupassant's The Coward shows disintegration under the strain of physical fear. Because of the fact that the story is limited in length there is hardly room for much growth of character, for growth is not a mushroom process where human character is concerned. Only a few great Short Stories have adequately managed character development. Character portrayal is the business of the Short Story writer; realistic character development, that of the novelist. The Short Story writer may, however, create so convincing an impression of character growth or disintegration as to produce the illusion of the whole process in actual operation. This is one of the supreme tests of the literary genius, and is worth striving for.

7. An Impression of Life.- Hawthorne was in the habit of setting down in his note books vague impressions with the intention of making a story at some later time to embody the impression. One of his notes reads, "The print of blood of a naked foot to be traced through the streets of a town. This impression is probably the germ of Dr. Grimshaw's Secret. Henry James confesses that the appearance of a peculiar or striking character often inspires him to invent a setting and incidents in which such a character might naturally act a significant part. Robert Louis Stevenson once told his cousin, Graham Balfour, that the impression of atmosphere led him to create the characters and incidents of The Merry Men, his purpose being to convey to others the feeling he himself had had when he saw the island

which is the setting for that story. One could well believe that Stevenson had no other purpose in mind than to contrast the vagabond poet Villon with the comfortable but colorless citizen, Seigneur de Brisetout, in A Lodging for the Night. This gives one an impression of life, and no more.

In such stories as these there is no universal truth to be taught, no moral to be impressed, no new theory of cause to be advanced, no strange corner of the world to be exploited. Evidently the author wishes merely to entertain with a good story; and to do this he simply embodies an impression.

This group will include a great many stories not easily classified under the other heads. It will be a sort of receptacle for the multitude of miscellaneous stories that refuse to consort with those typical stories which have class characteristics.

THE WRITER'S PRIMARY PURPOSE

The theme the author had most prominently in mind cannot always be determined at the first glance, though it usually comes to the surface after careful study. For this reason two people reading the same story may not agree as to its theme. The Truth of the Oliver Cromwell will illustrate how the theme of a story might by different readers be put into different groups. One reader, seeing no development or disintegration of character, might put the theme into the third group, “The exhibition of some human passion (jealousy) in a striking, unusual, or tense situation." Another might put it in group six on account of the disintegration of character under the influence of jealousy. Still another might

seven.

see no more in it than an impression of life, as in group It might be regarded as nothing more than the portrayal of the characters of New England fishermen (group five). Or, lastly, some reader might place the theme in group four, "The reproduction of a phase of life in a particular locality and occupation (New England fishing life).

Doubtless all of these elements are in the story. In most stories, beside the main theme, several other interests enter. To determine what the real theme is one has to put himself in the place of the author as he begins his story and ask himself, What is the single impression which the story is to make? If the story is well written, the "single impression" which the author desired will become apparent.

In The Truth of the Oliver Cromwell the author used New England fishing life (group four) as background. The theme is much more definite than a classification in group seven usually permits, and goes farther than group three; that is, the story shows disintegration of character under the influence of jealousy, and that (group six) is the theme. Character portrayal (group five) is only a means of making the main impression, as are the incidents and setting also.

THE GREATEST THEMES

Great stories will be found in all the groups mentioned above, for greatness does not depend upon theme alone. The greatest themes, however, are those dealing with some universal phase of human life with some matter supremely interesting to mankind in any country and in any period of time.

Love, Jealousy and Hate, Devotion to an Ideal, Courage, and Fear all the elemental emotions - do not depend upon time or place; and so stories embodying such themes as these were popular a thousand years ago, if artistically presented; they are read with keen interest today; and will thrill their multitudes of readers a thousand years hence. Our manners change; our speech changes; we build differently; we come to think differently; our ethical and religious principles undergo a slow transformation; but there are elemental depths below these currents which, if they change at all, change like nature itself with the slow march of milleniums. The Odyssey has not endured the wear of ages simply because it is an absorbing adventure story illuminated by the fire of poetic imagination, but chiefly because its theme is one of the simple, elemental, great things at the bottom of human nature -the triumph of mind over circumstances. Given a sufficient motive, the faithful Penelope in peril at home waiting the ten long years after the fall of Troy, Homer shows the adventurous and crafty Ulysses meeting and overcoming the obstacles set up by nature and man and the gods; and humanity in sympathy with the sorely tried adventurer follows him with breathless interest and rejoices with a species of savage joy in his triumphs. Such themes are simple, but they lie close to the foundation of human experience. Universality of interest lifts the epics above the nation which originated them and makes them world stories.

The writer of a Short Story who succeeds in embodying in his fiction one of these simple but fundamental interests of the human race has taken the first step toward the production of a story really great.