the vogue of a novel does not, that they have solid artistic merit. Clearly, then, the writer whose short stories are widely read is worthy of critical attention. Such a writer is Miss Alice Brown.

Personally I have for the New England dialect tale a partiality which, I think, must be shared by all Yankees whose childhood was spent in the country. There lies my danger. The pleasure which I take really in my own memories I may wrongly attribute to the author who evokes them. For this reason I have a better chance to see a writer, simply as a writer, clear and whole, when I can turn to specimens of his work less likely to awaken unliterary, if pleasurable, associations. I find Miss Brown divested of this dangerous charm in her latest collection of short stories, High Noon.

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The book proves her to be an artist. The term is not absolute (if it were, would we so often qualify it with "true" or "accomplished"?), and I do not raise the question of degree. I wish to say merely that the stories reveal a person who is guided by definite artistic ideals, and that consequently there is behind the storyteller a critic. Our first business shall be to disengage the critic. Doing so will help us to understand the story-teller. For this task, the title, High Noon, is helpful. With the legend one instant only is the sun at noon companies and explains it, it is not only a comment upon life, but a justification of the short story. For each tale aims to do what the short story is fitted to do supremely well, - to show the single moment in a human life for which everything that went before was a preparation and of which everything that comes after is a consequence. If a writer were to choose only such moments as subjects, he would never have one not easily confined within the limits of his chosen form, and he would never write a tale not full of interest and significance. To make such a choice is practically to comply with Poe's dictum that the short story should aim to convey a single predetermined effect.

For singleness of purpose is the one absolute requisite for successful use of the form; it is the one thing which must be demanded of the short story, the only thing without which excellence is impossible. So, in choosing single crucial moments in human lives, Miss Brown shows an orthodox appreciation of the artistic possibilities (and limitations) of the form. So far she is a sound critic.

She is sound, also, when she declares that the short story should be "perfect of form, sonnet-like in finish," - that is, if her somewhat vague phrase means, as I think it does, "sonnet-like in definiteness of form, and perfect in finish," and if, further, I may venture to interpret "perfect in finish" as relating to style, and including mastery of the single word and distinction of imaginative phrase. That such may be her ideal of style is, at any rate, shown by other remarks which are to be culled from the book. As to the word: "Ambrosial," says one of her characters, "is such a good word, majestic, large, a word dressed in purple!" Here is evidence of that sheer delight in sonorous vocables O Mesopotamia! — which is the sure sign of the artistic literary temper. As to the phrase: Another character, after saying that "every look" (of people whom she might meet) "would glass my shame," adds, "Isn't that a good phrase? Do you know enough about phrases, you child, to see how good that was?" The child's opinion is not given, — tactfully, if it coincides with mine; but the quotation clearly shows the author's feeling: she would always have her phrases beautiful. If anything more were required to indicate this devotion to word and phrase, there is the only work of literary appreciation which, so far as I know, Miss Brown has ever done a thin volume written in collaboration with Miss Guiney (herself a devotee of the phrase), on Stevenson, the praise of whom is perfervid.

The story-teller practices, on the whole with much success, what the critic preaches. Miss Brown's sense of form is

keen and true. She attains her effect with excellent economy and adroitness. Clumsiness of construction, extravagance of material, vagueness of point, are sins of which she is rarely guilty. If her sense of propriety in style were as unerring, there would be little of which, from an artistic point of view, there could be just complaint. Here the trouble is that she frequently misses her own ideal.

I believe that among masters of style different though they may be as Swift from Sir Thomas Browne there are no bad models; but I am sure that when an author whom nature intended for the school of Swift stubbornly attends the school of Browne, disaster is sure to follow. Such has been the evil of the spell of Stevenson: he has led men out of their natural paths to follow him. Now if, with all his native gifts and all his "sedulous aping" of the masters, he produced not a real, but a stage pageantry of words, what can lesser men be expected to do? They will write not the beautiful word, but the freakish one; not the illuminating phrase, but the strained conceit; and every sentence will, in Miss Brown's words, "glass their shame."

Miss Brown seems to me to have committed such a blunder in the choice of her ideal as I have indicated. She seeks with grim determination the word which is a color, the phrase which is a jewel. But tenacity of purpose (though grim) is not adequate to this especial achievement. One sighs when he reads of “moon-fed" nights, or of words which "index" cruel certainty; one is irritated when he finds that "this was no new pageantry of a mobile brain" means only that a woman is sincere; one regrets the inadequate rewards sometimes falling to strenuous effort when he hears a wife anxious to coax a reluctant husband into society described as "striving to train his natal (sic) honesties for social courts," or hears a woman answer a lover pleading for frankness, that each must live "in little citadels of rose-colored reserve." Miss Brown has herself doubtless laughed at

the elegant poet who, to avoid the commonplace "gun," spoke of the "deadly tube;" but are her phrases better? She has a sense of humor, rippling and abundant enough at times; but it is like those disappearing streams which force the traveler across weary stretches of arid sand before they gush again, full and fresh and sweet as ever. Surely it has vanished when she writes such passages as this:

"Love! He saw in it the roseate apotheosis of youth, announced by chiming bells, crowned with unfading flowers, the minister to bliss. He followed it through stony paths marked by other bloodstained tracks up to the barren peaks of pain. Was it the same creature, after all, rose-lipped or passion-pale, starving with loss or drunken with new wine? Was it the love of one soul accompanying him through all, or was this his response to the individual need, and only a part of the general faithfulness to what demands our faith?"

This looks like Rossetti strained through Wilde and served as prose by some one who does not know what it is; but whatever it may be, it was clearly intended to be lyrical; and quite as clearly it fails. It is of this failure that I complain, and not of the attempt to be poetical; for a writer may adopt whatever style he prefers, if only he can use it so as to charm the reader. But the obligation to please points to this, that an author should not strive willfully for effects beyond his reach, but, squaring his ambition with his gifts, should write in the style which they best adapt him to employ with ease and grace. As Miss Brown can, and generally does, write simple, flexible English, wearing its modest adornment of apt figure and vivid word, such paragraphs exasperate like finding paper chrysanthemums where one is seeking real violets.

This false lyricism springs partly, as I said, from unwise emulation of admired authors, and partly, as I think, from the somewhat hysterical way in which she feels her favorite subject. This is the

woman whom love has in any way disappointed. Miss Brown is notably preoccupied with the jilted. Of the thirtysix short stories in her three collections, ten deal directly, a still larger number indirectly, with some variety of American Dido. But she has sympathy also for the woman whose sorrows, if not so obvious, are quite as real. I mean the femme incomprise. The term denotes to her mind the entire sex. In High Noon, she says implicitly, if not explicitly, that the masculine ideal, the reasonable woman, does not exist. The most humdrum, even the most happily married, have unsatisfied needs, subtle jealousies. All have standards of husband-like or loverly conduct which, hopeless of comprehension, they never make known, but by which it is the law of their nature to judge. It is the tragedy of their lives, their common lot, that men never understand, never divine.

Miss Brown is not content merely to state the problem; she solves it. She has a gospel of love, which she preaches continuously. This consolation, this remedy, is her personal message to her sex, the great message of her books. It is summed up in a speech which I will quote. Rosamund, a love-lorn girl, is talking to a woman "betrayed and lost to herself and to the world, - a poor, besmirched creature like Rossetti's Jenny" (she is as like her as Hester Prynne !), who wishes a "comforting thought." "Love," says Innocence, "is greater than any circumstance or any expression. And love is not taking it is giving. If he has betrayed you, pray night and day for him that he may learn what love really is. We must give and give. Oh, what difference does it make whether we have or whether we are denied?" Loving, that is, like virtue, should be its own reward.

Let me amplify a little. Love is independent of the will. Once it descends upon a woman, it holds her for life, it is her whole existence. Upon man, however, its power is fitful, it is a thing apart. The woman may have an unfaith

ful lover; she certainly will have an imperfect one; and she should expect no better. Her reward lies in loving; she is lucky to have so strong and interesting an emotion. If her lover is imperfect, she must pity him for the defect of nature which makes him so; if she finds that he loves not her but another, she must rejoice that the great boon has come to him, even at her cost.

Though I am masculine and unsympathetic, this statement is, I hope, fair. That it is so I cannot, in an article on the short stories, cite the novels to prove; but ponder" Nancy Boyd's Last Sermon " (it is Miss Brown's, but not, I trust, her last), or the logic of "Natalie Blayne." This doctrine of total surrender to the man is for our days curiously Eastern and reactionary; but as discussion of its value is outside the plan of my article, I have only to add that her earnestness about it leads to vexatious monotony of subject, to incorrect character-drawing, and to emotional excrescences which need the knife. This is inevitable. It always occurs to a writer who seeks to impose a moral upon life rather than to extract the moral within it.

Reviewing a volume of short stories is comparable to the circus feat of riding twelve horses at once. To simplify my task, then, let me analyze one typical story, by way of giving concrete illustration to these general remarks. Almost any one of the dozen tales in High Noon might be chosen for this representative purpose. Rosamund in Heaven," in which appears the disgraced bluestocking ineptly likened to Rossetti's Jenny,

"Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea," might be taken as presenting the state of mind proper to women whose love is unrequited, as showing Miss Brown's idea of how to be happy though unmarried. But Rosamund's consolatory remarks have already been quoted, and the story is otherwise uninteresting. "A Book of Love" would serve for the same reason; or, for that and its clever situation, "A Meeting in the Market Place." In this tale a fatal but not disabling

malady permits a woman to step from her "little citadel of rose-colored reserve," and talk frankly (for once!) with a man who had forsworn her society for fear she was falling in love with him (a variety of masculine chivalry which, I notice, always rouses the wrath of ladies); but Miss Brown uses the piquant occasion merely to give as dialogue what she has often enough given as comment, and misses its dramatic values. Again for the same reason, the choice might fall on "The Map of the Country" (it is the pays du tendre), but all of these stories are inferior to three others, which also treat the favorite theme. These are "Natalie Blayne," "A Runaway Match," and "The Miracle." This last is tempting. Although the heroine has the annoying habit of speaking of her baby as a “man-child," and although a sense of humor (obviously absent in the lady) would have saved the situation, if I may be permitted a bull, - before it arose, the story seems to me (I hope not because the woman is in the wrong; she it was who tried to train her husband's "natal honesties for social courts") a strong piece of work, the emotion of which has its warrant in life. The moral, however, seems to be (it is pretty elusive) that if you marry a bear you must live in his den, and fails to illustrate her principal message. Nor is "A Runaway Match,"

a

stolen frolic of a pair, once boy and girl lovers, one of whom is and the other is about to be married, - although charming, sufficiently representative. Thus we reach "Natalie Blayne," which is thoroughly characteristic, and to which, moreover, could I escape incredulity as to the mental state of the heroine, I should accord nearly whole-souled liking.

Old Madam Gilbert is ill of a mysterious disease. The puzzled doctor admits that she is "slipping down hill." She "lay high upon the pillows in the great south room, where the sun slept placidly on the chintz-covered chairs and old-fashioned settings. Her delicate profile looked sharp, and the long black

lashes softened her eyes pathetically. Her gray hair went curling in a disordered mass up from the top of her head like a crown. She was a wonderful old creature, with a beauty full of meaning, transcending that of bloom and color." One hand was lying "in ringed distinction" outside the sheet.

Like the doctor, the distressed husband, old Ralph Gilbert, lacks intuition, and is helpless. Evidently the case requires a woman. Diana is summoned.

"Diana, entering the room, dwarfed them both by her size, her deep-chested, long-limbed majesty, her goddess-walk. She was a redundant creature in all that pertains to the comforts of life. She looked wifehood and motherhood in one. Her shoulder was a happy place for a cheek. Her brown eyes were full of fun and sorrow. Her crisping hair was good for baby hands to pull. She went swiftly up to Madam Gilbert, and touching her very gently, seemed to take her into her heart and arms.

“You lamb,' said she.”

These two descriptions show Miss Brown nearly at her best and almost at her worst. That of Madam Gilbert, except in the phrase "ringed distinction," is simple and unaffected. But that of Diana! When I first read the story I carried the impression through several pages that Diana was a colored person. She is not: she is Madam Gilbert's niece.

Moreover, she has humor, commonsense, resourcefulness, and the master quality,-intuition. To her Madam Gilbert confides the secret of her illness, it is Natalie Blayne. That name the tripping first syllables, the dignified close

is an example of Miss Brown's artistic adroitness. Nothing could better suggest the romantic charm which the reader must be made to feel in this "other woman." It is itself nearly the whole story.

When Madam Gilbert was first engaged to Ralph, she unluckily spoke of Natalie Blayne.

"Natalie Blayne!' said your uncle; 'Natalie Blayne!' Madam Gilbert sat up

in bed, and her voice rang out dramatically. Diana saw that she was forgotten, and that the other woman was acting out a scene which had played itself in her memory many a time. 'Do you know her?' said I. His eyes grew very bright. His face changed, my dear. 'Natalie Blayne,' said he, 'I saw her for an hour, a year and a half ago. She came into Judge Blayne's office, and he sent me out with her to find columbines in the meadow. I liked her better at first sight than any woman I ever saw!""

This was indiscreet of Mr. Gilbert, for his betrothed had a theory about "true mates." This theory needs to be brought into relief, for it is not peculiar to Madam Gilbert, but is part of Miss Brown's philosophy of love, and explains the extent of that "giving" which she says is imperative. As one has only to read this story to see, it means "give the other woman;" true mates must not be kept apart, matter what the cost to the conventionalities, or to other human hearts. The teaching reminds one oddly of Goethe's Elective Affinities. Madam Gilbert acted in strict accord with this doctrine. Inferring from Ralph's too warm expressions that not she, but Natalie Blayne, was his true mate, she proposed to break the engagement.

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Hearing the next day, however, that Natalie had married, she decided that she would try to make up to Ralph the loss of his true mate. But marriage brought her no ease. Between her and her husband stood Natalie Blayne. She knew that when Ralph should meet Natalie in the next world, he'd say, "Why, here you are, my mate!"

Even worse was in store! Natalie becoming a widow, the conscientious wife faced the knowledge that she was in the way, not only in the next world, but in this. The prompt remarriage of her rival seemed, however, to leave her free to claim Ralph, at least for this life. But no! Madam Gilbert, after forty years of wedded happiness, has heard that this troublesome creature, once more a widow,

has returned to the village. Her presence makes the old lady ill. She has n't, as she says, the spirit to meet the situation now. "I hardly had it years ago; but now I'm an old woman. I realize it, my hair is white. See how big the veins are in my hands."

If it occurs to her that her husband, older than she, is no Romeo, or that Natalie is now no Juliet, she deems it of no consequence. True mates must wed, and she must abdicate. Ralph, whether he knows it or not, must still love Natalie; Natalie's two marriages are simply her effort to find the true mate whom accident has prevented her securing in Ralph. Like the girl in Goldsmith's lyric, the superfluous Madam Gilbert decides that her only art is to die.

Up to this point, — and indeed to the end, the somewhat complicated plot is presented with a clearness and neatness which do honor to the author's technique; but to my masculine apprehension the situation as finally presented seems grotesque. Miss Brown, however, although she sees its humor, and indeed freely presents the humorous view, is convinced not merely that her heroine's monomania is possible, but that it is probable, and finds nothing unsympathetic about it. She clearly intends the story to be like Diana's brown eyes, "full of fun and

sorrow."

To me thus far there is not much of either; but in this respect, as in others, the tale now undergoes a marked change. The plot is brought to the necessary impasse when Madam Gilbert swears Diana to secrecy; and it is then worked out in true comedy spirit to a conclusion at once ingenious, unexpected, and natural. If Diana cannot speak, she can act, and she has her humorous plan. "Little darts had awakened in her eyes and played about her mouth," is Miss Brown's way of saying that she smiled. She invites Natalie to call. Since Madam Gilbert is ill, Uncle Ralph has, of course, to receive the visitor. The result of the interview is awaited by the despairing invalid