Excerpt from Twenty-Nine Tales From the French All modern literatures contain numerous examples of that shorter form of prose fiction known in English as the Short Story, although none with the possible exception of the Russian has so fully developed it into a distinct species, admirably fitted to express a racial temperament as have the French. The English experiments in this form as late as Maria Edgeworth and George Eliot were merely clumsy abbreviations of the novel, novelettes rather than true short stories, with the elaborate analyses of character, extended descriptions, and ponderous plots of the larger form. And in spite of occasional brilliant exceptions among the younger generation of English fiction writers it may be fairly said that the English temperament has never taken easily to this genre. Their technical process is too often a foreshortening of more elaborate narrative rather than a distinct and focused creation. The English mind turns more naturally to accretion and analysis than to compression and rapid synthesis. 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.