Excerpt from Forces in Fiction and Other Essays Nor is it Jingoism, by the way, to remark that the introduction of some of the Southern and Western types so saliently depicted by younger American novelists - Page and Harris, Stuart, Thanet, Wister, Garland, Chopin, Fernald, and others - is as hopeful a sign as current fiction can show, and one hardly to be paralleled in England. In the earlier days Bret Harte took a unique place because of this same power, albeit not always used aright. Who, let us inquire, are the living personages in the stories of Henry James? Verily, since the days of The American, the best in this kind are but shadows. Stevenson, ad mirable in the other cardinal points of invention, construction, and a style that sets him apart from his contemporaries, has also thrown out upon the fictional canvas a few figures which are distinct - Alan Breck, David Balfour, both the Bal lantraes, Kirstie the elder, and quite a portrait gallery of rascals the most firm-bodied and pictur esque in the novel-writing of our time. 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.