THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY

Press, Volume L, Issue 8582, 8 September 1893, Page 2

THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY

l» By Caba. The modern short story moat present some difficult places for those who find Scott abtmse and are half bewildered by Mr Blaek'e "Songs In italics and In the Scotch language." Poor Mre Dodd forecast an "Age of Jargon," yet she had never met with " Old Creole Days, or even "The Courting of Dinah Shadd." But apart from any professed dialect tales, it is amusing to note how much the American storyteller depends on colloquial, phrases. For iis, sometimes a mere word is enough to give a wealth of foreignness. There is a lovely example in one of the Pansy books where a frivolous little person has been waking up to a sense of her spiritual responsibilities. " Have you thought about these matters any f* says the teacher ; and the young convert shyly makes the welcome answer, "Some." Some phrases charm perhaps and others displease, by reason of the unusual; however, charm prevails, and our esteem for the American short-story is a proof of it. They hold us interested in the same way that a fancydress ball gives new interest ia, our friends; it is the familiar in the unfamiliar dress., that) give* the pleasure of surprise. ** And why not Americanisms," aa Mr J. M. Lehy demands, "if they express something, as "fall" for autumn, better than we can ? " The sentiment is good, though one may beg leave to differ with his particular illustration. However, a too faithful reading of these short stories suggests a time when the charm of the unfamiliar musfc be gone— not only from the phrase, bub from the place and circumstances. Even Miss Mary A. Wllkins'a lovely little sketches scarcely convey the fresh delight they gave at first. We begin to know the little house with the morning glories, blowing over it that we are nearly certain to meet with in the first paragraph. We have grown used to talks of "rubbers." and ''dusters" ancl the faded calico gown. The same table will be spread, we know, with porJc and baked beans and the "pickles"—which English people call preserves—and sauce, which is American for jam. When we are in a festive mood we shall make cup cak», and at all seasons and in all moods, "pie." Pies pervade the American'story as steadily as the übiquitous Irish petticoat does "Grania.* They are always to be baked, or burnt, or left in corners to be stepped upon, or mixed by forsaken damsels and forlorn old maids. When we are quit of pies it i» usually time to be preparing " soda-biscuit. ,, fiamlin Garland's over. - burdened heroines in "Main Travelled Roads" were really martyrs, if you come to investigate matters, to that perpetual pie and biscuit habit.. All the tragedy might hare been saved, if they could only have had an honest bakery establishment) and supplies of New Zealand mutton. Then the personalities repeat themselves a little In the same way, since it is impossible even for Mary Wilkiae to be always discovering a new type. The old maids are unsurpassable and finely distinct, but her younger woman has nearly always an almost irritating family resemblance to the rest, especially when (as usually happens) " most; pitiful thing of all for another woman to see, she had not crimped her pretty blonde hair," but wears it "combed straight back" from her throbbing forehead. Uncrimped hair pervades the story in tragic moments—like the pie. It is generally combined with a more than usually faded gown, and appears to be the acknowledged sign and symbol of an unhappy or misplaced love. English women have just been instructed by Lady Violet Grevilte that it is unseemly for a girl who has been jilted to .wear pink—a refinement of feeling possibly borrowed from these tales, and the tragic element seems frequent enough certainly to make them a good authority. With all their beauty, there arises a sense of repetition, almost of artificiality at the last, that comes from the narrow scene with its re arrangement always of the same stage properties. Jnst so Charles Egbert Craddock'e later volumes suffered from the monotony of tone and loss of unexpectedness, when the outward characteristics of the Tennessee mountain dwellers had been once made known to us, and the " we *uns" and " you *uns " dialect was no longer new and strange. * But it seems ungrateful to scoff at man* nerisms and repetitions that, after all, are very slight flaws in a very tine department of American literature—the sympathetically minute delineation of familiar life. Amongst the poets, James Whitcotnb Rlley takes these same themes, and makes verse aa delicately homely as Mary Wilkins's prove. Certainly none can touch the American writers for the intense perception of (he essential beauty that lira Iα the every-day life-hisSories about them, and Charles Egbert Craddock, Mary E. Wilkihs, and James Whltcomb RUey will always be examples of how such things should bo told.