that "people will not buy a volume of short stories" is
notorious to all publishers. To offset the axiom there
are no doubt incongruous phenomena--ranging from the
continued popularity of the Bible to the present
general esteem of Mr. Kipling, and embracing the rather
unaccountable vogue of "O. Henry";--but, none the
less, the superstition has its force.
Here intervenes the multifariousness of man,
pointed out somewhere by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton,
which enables the individual to be at once a
vegetarian, a golfer, a vestryman, a blond, a mammal, a
Democrat, and an immortal spirit. As a rational
person, one may debonairly consider The Certain Hour
possesses as large license to look like a volume of
short stories as, say, a backgammon-board has to its
customary guise of a two-volume history; but as an
average-novel-reader, one must vote otherwise. As an
average-novel-reader, one must condemn the very book
which, as a seasoned scribbler, one was moved to write
through long consideration of the drama already
suggested--that immemorial drama of the desire to write
perfectly of beautiful happenings, and the obscure
martyrdom to which this desire solicits its possessor.
Now, clearly, the struggle of a special temperament
with a fixed force does not forthwith begin another
story when the locale of combat shifts. The case is,
rather, as when--with certainly an intervening change
of apparel--Pompey fights Caesar at both Dyrrachium and
Pharsalus, or as when General Grant successively
encounters General Lee at the Wilderness,