Excerpt from The Best Short Stories of 1916: And the Yearbook of the American Short Story The truth is that the American Short story cannot be reduced to a literary formula, and if we are to measure its progress at all, it must be, as Mr. Chesterton once happily phrased it, with a growing reed. In the past it has been a frequent comment on our literature and our life to find that its interpretation in the hands of our writers was less individual and more standardized than in other countries. There is still much truth in this observa tion, and were the fact which it chronicles a completely true generalization, I should have little hope for any future literature of permanent importance in this country. But during the past few years, slowly and naturally as the budding and growth of a plant, a new spirit in fiction has been making itself felt and spreading itself in many directions throughout the country. It had been felt in poetry much earlier, and the full fruition of its art in our poetry has almost come, but in fiction it is still young and requires much fostering in the hands of our native writers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.