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and the West.Rudyard Kipling, who became a master of the technique of the short story in England,has colored his stories with the atmosphere of India and the far East, while O. Henry, theAmerican master, has given us character types of the big cities, particularly of New York.Its Composition. You, no doubt, have written stories for your composition work, but sofar they have probably been chronological narratives; that is, stories told, as thenewspapers tell them, by relating a series of events in the order of time. The real shortstory, has, like the novel, a plot. The word plot here means the systematic plan or patterninto which the author weaves the events of the story up to some finishing point of intenseinterest or of great importance to the story. This vital part of the narrative is called theclimax or crucial point. If you note the pattern or design in wall paper, carpet, or dressornament, you will see that all the threads or lines are usually worked together to form aharmonious whole, but there is some special center of the design toward whicheverything works. In the short story, as soon as the author arrives at the crucial point he isthrough, often having no other conclusion. This ending is so important that it must alwaysbe thought out or planned for from the very beginning. This is true even in a surpriseending, such as O. Henry delights in.Unlike the novel, the short story works its plot out in some single main incident, which isusually acted out by one chief character in a short space of time, and all but the necessary