The _National Observer_ was at the climax of
its career of heroic insistence upon lyrical brevity and a vivid finish,
and Mr. Frank Harris was not only printing good short stories by other
people, but writing still better ones himself in the dignified pages of
the _Fortnightly Review. Longman's Magazine_, too, represented a
_clientele_ of appreciative short-story readers that is now
scattered. Then came the generous opportunities of the _Yellow Book_,
and the _National Observer_ died only to give birth to the _New
Review_. No short story of the slightest distinction went for long
unrecognised. The sixpenny popular magazines had still to deaden down the
conception of what a short story might be to the imaginative limitation of
the common reader--and a maximum length of six thousand words. Short
stories broke out everywhere. Kipling was writing short stories; Barrie,
Stevenson, Frank-Harris; Max Beerbohm wrote at least one perfect one, "The
Happy Hypocrite"; Henry James pursued his wonderful and inimitable bent;
and among other names that occur to me, like a mixed handful of jewels
drawn from a bag, are George Street, Morley Roberts, George Gissing, Ella
d'Arcy, Murray Gilchrist, E.
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