wishes to make with his climax upon you and me, his readers; but
the interesting life which it is or should be his purpose to write
about for our delectation must be maneuvered, or must be chosen or
rejected, not according to the limitation which small space
imposes, but with its suitability to the "formula" in mind. In
brief, if we are to have complete efficiency, the right kind of
life and no other must be put into the short-story hopper. Nothing
which cannot be told rapidly must be dropped in, lest it clog the
smoothly spinning wheels. If it is a story of slowly developing
incongruity in married life, the action must be speeded beyond
probability, like a film in the moving pictures, before it is
ready to be made into a short story. If it is a tale of
disillusionment on a prairie farm, with the world and life
flattening out together, some sharp climax must be provided
nevertheless, because that is the only way in which to tell a
story. Indeed it is easy to see the dangers which arise from
sacrificing truth to a formula in the interests of efficiency.

This is the limitation by form; the limitation by subject is quite
as annoying. American writers from Poe down have been fertile in
plots. Especially since O. Henry took the place of Kipling as a
literary master, ingenuity, inventiveness, cleverness in its
American sense, have been squandered upon the short story. But
plots do not make variety. Themes make variety. Human nature
regarded in its multitudinous phases makes variety. There are only
a few themes in current American short stories,--the sentimental
theme from which breed ten thousand narratives; the theme of
intellectual analysis and of moral psychology favored by the
"literary" magazines; the "big-business" theme; the theme of
American effrontery; the social-contrast theme; the theme of