tion of the emotions of men brought face to face with death. Not only does Mérimée efface himself completely from his narrative, but he so compresses his plot by the elimination of every non-contributive detail that his story moves undeviatingly on to its goal.

As with unity of structure, so with coherence. The short-story exacts a conciseness and compactness quite foreign to the novel and even to the tale. The deliberation that characterizes the dramatic structure of Richard Yea-and-Nay, for instance, as shown in the analysis presented on pp. 230-31, or of Esther, as shown on pp. 205– 17, is impossible in the typical short-story, and, although a general adjustment to the methods of the more extended narrative forms may often be discovered, as in the case of The Black Poodle (pp. 222-24), yet it is in outline rather than in detail. The most effective plan of structure is that in which each detail leads unerringly to the final culmination. The incidents accumulate, each bringing the reader closer and closer to the goal. He may not be conscious whither he is tending, but the coherence of event after event leads him on surely to the inevitable issue. This is especially clear in the case of "hoax plots," like Marjorie Daw and The Lady or the Tiger? in which the reader suddenly finds himself completely hoodwinked, but realizes that it is all his own fault and that from the beginning the trend of events has been thoroughly consecutive and logical. A good example of this coherent structure is to be found in Balzac's La Grande Bretêche. The point of view changes repeatedly from that of the narrator to that of one or another of the actors; yet, when one has completed the narrative, he realizes how many unnoted incidents, apparently trivial, are essential links in the plot-chain, and the story conveys not only the impres

sion of perfect unity but of carefully planned sequence as well.

While the short-story may concern itself with a single incident, as in the case of Markheim, it frequently has occasion to use the episodic form; and the linking of the episodes then becomes a very critical consideration in view of the compact unity and coherence essential to the type. This difficulty may be met by a careful process (1) of subordination or (2) of close coördination. Mérimée's Taking of the Redoubt is an excellent illustration of the first. The reader does not instinctively divide this into individual episodes of equal rank: (1) The arrival in camp on the evening of September 4; (2) the events of the night before the battle; (3) the opening of the battle; (4) the assault on the redoubt. Rather all merge into (4). The presentation of the young lieutenant to his captain becomes merely introductory and fades insensibly into (2), which in turn, in the very middle of a sentence, resolves itself into (3), all the episodes standing in distinct subordination to the main theme of the story. Morrison's On the Stairs is another instance, less smooth, perhaps, in mechanical execution, yet revealing the distinctly subordinate rôle of the contributory incidents.

The Great Stone Face and Flute and Violin are examples of the coördinating structure. Here the bond of coherence appears in the close sequence by which event follows logically upon event. The transition between the consecutive stages in Ernest's career is traceable in such expressions as

The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be a man now, etc.

More years sped swiftly and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his native valley, and was now a man of middle age, etc.

The years hurried onward, treading in their haste on one another's heels. And now they began to bring white hairs, and scatter them over the head of Ernest; they made reverend wrinkles across his forehead, and furrows in his cheeks. He was an aged man, etc.

The reader passes from stage to stage without perceptible jar, guided by the thread of chronological succession and the gradual development and growing maturity of Ernest's personality.

In Flute and Violin the episode gradations are emphasized by the division of the story into sections, or miniature chapters. But so intimately are they bound together by the temporal and logical inter-relations already set forth on pp. 167-72 that the final effect is one of entire coherence and natural transition from the August evening in 1809, when the parson makes his first appearance, until 1814, when "loved and revered, he passed onward to the close."

This matter of episodic coördination is intimately allied to the matter of proportion and emphasis. It may be that the essential episode, or event, is, in matter of actual space assigned, inferior to the preliminary and the supplementary matter. But, if this be the case, the author must be sensitive to what we may call the potentiality of his main incident: it must possess sufficient dynamic power to impress itself on the reader, or the essential quality of the short-story is lost. Of the sixty pages of Flute and Violin, for example, perhaps not more than one tenth of that number is devoted to the elaboration of the episode that is the germ of the whole story, but the pathos of that one, its emotional force, is sufficient to make of it a centre from which all the others radiate.

This nice adjustment of proportion and force is often secured by the effective device of an intense conclusion. "Hoax-plot" stories all illustrate this device, as do all those constructed on the plan already illustrated by the diagram in figure 11 on page 221. The concluding sentence reveals effectively the destination of the plot-course, and relieves the suspense that has been accumulating through the various episodes. Examples of such conclusions have already been indicated in the discussion of emphasis in plot structure.

From all these considerations it is apparent that the rhetorical qualities of the short-story-coherence, emphasis, proportion-all lead ultimately back to unity as the essential and all-pervading quality of structure. If it lacks this one-ness of tone, this complete subordination of parts to the underlying motive, it fails in its very nature. And in its perfection and completeness of structure we have, as Thomas Wentworth Higginson has said,

the conditions of perfect art; there is no subdivision of interest; the author can strike directly in, without preface, can move with determined step toward a conclusion, and can O highest privilege! - stop when he is done.