I

THE eminence which women have reached in writing fiction they have attained in no other of the creative arts; and this is surprising, since in these other arts also they take delight.

For if one looks to music he will find that its pleasure comes freely to women, and many are trained to song and to the instrument; and yet the great composers are not of them. And women show a refinement and a joy in color, and many enter schools of painting, but the foremost painters ever have been men. The theatre in its turn adds its own testimony; for the play is to woman a daily and a nightly pleasure, and she knows its art both as observer and as actress; yet women have never been among the first composers of the drama.

In the minor art of dancing, and in the nobler work of reproducing the music of the great composers, as in acting the characters of the great dramatists, there are women of high, and even of highest, rank. But to leave these more interpretative or reproductive arts, only in fiction does she approach the mark of men. For here she must be counted with the great of the craft. And even should some crabbed soul insist that the rare company in which are George Eliot, Jane Austen, George Sand, Madame de Staël, and the Queen of Navarre, does not include the one who is greatest in the guild, yet there is no discomfort felt in naming these women along with Scott and Dickens, Hugo, Cervantes, and Boccaccio. But

speak of the other creative arts, and we feel at once the chill: Chaminade looks ill at ease in the presence of Beethoven; Joanna Baillie, with Shakespeare; Angelika Kauffmann, with Michelangelo.

This wide success in the one direction and the hesitant mediocrity in the other are the more puzzling when one considers how inapplicable are the everready explanations. Even were it clear or probable that the native intellect of women is less than that of men, yet fiction is certainly no less 'intellectual' than is painting; indeed it would seem to make sterner demands on thought, and to have less of its substance in the region of mere sense. Nor can custom and convention here explain. For while the approach to the writing of fiction, it is true, has been easy and open, yet the way to acting has often been stony and forbidden; and if convention in the past could have prohibited, we should have no actresses to-day. In Shakespeare's England it was against custom for women to appear upon the stage. And until recently with us as in ancient Rome, and in China to this daythere has been a moral suspicion of the actor's work, that must have been to many a woman of talent for the stage a very lion in the path. The readier explanations, as I have said, here lead to nothing, and one is restless until he strikes a truer course. But with fresh endeavor and a favoring gale, one may still hope to reach the haven.

And first let us see, if.possible, the wings of the novelist's fancy unfolding

from the silken chrysalis. Thus we shall discern already something of the secret of woman's power.

In a former issue of the Atlantic I gave an account of experiments upon the tale-composing faculty in children, where the girls proved far more skillful in handling the story-maker's gear. But the products there examined were made upon request and under a watchful eye, and one would like to know what the child does when not in bondage to the Egyptian. Only then shall we know his impulse and free genius. Of their own heart and will, do both boys and girls make stories, and often, and with equal grace? Does story-imagining have a like honor in the life of each?

The answer to such questions cannot be sought direct in school or nursery; for the timid facts we are after would hide at our approach. Better fortune I find with persons more mature, and yet still young, recalling their ways in childhood. Thus through the memory of many hundreds of generous young men and women, there has been afforded some glimpse of the imagination at its play.

And if I may at once share with the reader what is found, I notice that spontaneous story-composing is almost universal among children. Rare is the boy who has not yielded to its spell; and rarer still the girl. And in the subject-matter of these tales, while much is common to the boy and girl, drawn from the experience of common living made rosy by some hidden light within, yet the situations imagined by the girls seem to have wider range and contrast. The imagination of your usual lad, when it is not engaged in practical planning, runs easily to adventure with Indians and outlaws, adventure on the sea, and the deeds of heroes - perhaps Richard the Lion-hearted. The girl, if she be a fair example, will include some

of this, but she will more readily enter regions still more remote, guided as by Ariel and Puck in turn, and even by Caliban. One girl made nightly visits in her still-waking fancy to a cavernous land of wart-faced tusky dwarfs. Another imagined herself clad in rich raiment, riding a beautiful elephant up and down the streets of Spokane! Another had at call a winged pony, glossy black, to whisk her off to cloudland. Under the warm light of girls' intelligence, also, conscious life springs up in all things in animals, flowers, and trees, and even the common instruments of home. And with the wider region traversed, there is a more varied stir of feeling. The girls in their emotion appear less confined to fright and to a sense of conquering strength; but keeping some taste of these, they pass easily on to mirth, affection, and beauty, and to all those strangely mingled emotions that come from fairies, goblins, and magicians.

Dull counting would indicate that with the girls are found the many who have known the spell of story-making. But what is perhaps of greater import among the girls who feel the spell, more have yielded heart and soul. One finds here and there a lad who gives to this invisible art-much room, but with the girls we find a more frequent surrender, deep and complete, as to an enchantment. "I have lived so much in imaginary places and as imaginary persons,' writes one, who speaks for many, 'that I still find myself exaggerating fact into fiction. I imagine events so strongly that I tell them as having occurred.'

This solid reality of what is imagined comes more rarely to the boy, and even then is often honeycombed with doubt. Listen to these confessions, from among the boys who are nearest to having faith. "The stories were not real to me at first,' says one young dog of an unbe

liever, 'but after telling them several times they would become a part of me and at times would feel as though they really happened.' 'The stories were quite real when first begun,' says another, 'but even as a child one recognizes their utter impossibility.' And still another, "The stories were very real to me, and I could almost make myself believe that things occurred which I had only imagined.'

'Not real to me at first,' 'At times,' 'I could almost make myself believe'out upon a fancy so sicklied o'er with thought! But hearken to the girls. 'My stories were very real to me.' 'They were very real, being my companions when alone. If I was with others, the stories were real, but were now in the background as old friends.' 'The stories were always very real; the pictures of the events passed through my mind with almost the vividness of hallucinations at times, especially at night.' Here is no faltering; the stories call forth the very throb and tremor of life.

And if I may illustrate from still another side this fuller surrender by the girls, we find them often, not 'making' the story, but passive, themselves carried along on the story's own career. "These stories seemed to come naturally into my mind with no effort whatever,' is the testimony of one, and my supply of them seemed unlimited.' Indeed the tale sometimes takes the bit in its teeth and runs away. "The stories were always most real at night,' writes one young woman, and began almost automatically when I laid my head on the pillow, arousing almost as much emotion as actual events. The habit came to keep me awake to such an extent that it was necessary to cut it off for the sake of health, and for years a continual strong effort was made to banish the stories at night, although they always greatly interfered with work or study in the daytime.' We should hard

ly find in an obsession such as this the promise of the highest art; it is too similar to 'automatic speech,' or to improvisation in music, which lack the virtues that come only by critical control; yet it tells us of the girl's nature, seeming to show that the currents of her imagination have their source less in the high open spaces held by the will and judgment, than in the depths and recesses of the mind.

II

If the girl's story often comes from subterranean and more constant sources, this would help to explain another quality. For in her who finds the greater joy in the art and yields herself to its pleasure, the story's characters and action might well reveal a strange persistence. And thus among the girls we more often find stories woven upon the same thread, day after day, for months and even years - a feature which Miss Leroyd had already come upon, and my own findings amply confirm her account. One young woman tells me that her imaginings throughout childhood were all upon a single theme, the doings of a group of monsters half-human and half-beast. Another girl continued her story for as many as twelve years. And further, there are girls and rarely a boy, I find, in whom run several 'continued' stories abreast; and now one and now another develops, as the mood may lead. With the boys there is also a frequent persistence, but usually of another kind: they work their tales over, or repeat them without retouching. In part this shows some poverty of imagination, but it may also show more deliberation and less impulse. Their creation comes by sweat of brow, as to smith or potter. With the girls the story grows. And even where there is no continued story, in the usual sense, yet former charac

ters reappear and act anew, in this way outliving the interruptions of the story-process. The experience here is not unlike those others, which also, so far as my own evidence goes, are less rare among girls,-where for years the child has as his playmate some wholly imaginary creature.

Although it has a larger place and deeper hold and continuity, the storypower among girls more often moves in secret; its fabric is something never to be revealed. The boy will often tell his tale as from the house-tops, though sometimes keeping it as for the hawthorn-shade. But to the girl any unguarding of her treasures, even to a closest friend, may seem a violation, almost a profaning. 'I could never bring myself to share them with any one,' writes one; and another says of her stories, 'No one ever knew of these dreams of mine. They were as real and as sacred as anything could be.' This secrecy, with all its tangled motives, shows how intimate the story is with the composer's heart and self.

And this close bond is shown in a further and unexpected way. The manchild is of course born to the purple, born to be lord of the world; and with all the call that is heard within and without to egotism, why should he not weave his tale about himself! Yet we find that the girls oftener than the boys are in the centre and thick of the fray. It is from the women that one commonly gains testimony such as this: 'I was always a character in my stories. In fact my stories were but a part of my life, as much as any real actions were.' Her stories were 'part of her life, as much as any real actions were,' - will not this perhaps give the key to the anomaly? With boys and girls there is of course self-seeking, the desire for self-aggrandizement; but surely there cannot be more of this in girls. Have we not here, rather, some appearance

in unmellowed form of what there must be in all great art: the artist putting himself into his work? The girl more often appears in her story, not from exceptional egotism, but because her tale is vital to her, and she must of necessity feel herself within it, sharing its risk and happy outcome. In miniature and distantly it reflects that noble self-consciousness, almost as of divine ordination for the work, which is revealed in Milton and in Dante.

III

Yet the presence of the girl in her own tale points further and offers a clue to more for which we seek. Thus far we have been observing a contrast in imagination, which appears too distinct and early to come wholly by education or by moulding custom; in the main it seems rather to be natural and of endowment. But now we may see how endowment is fortified by circumstance.

One of our witnesses testified that in her more intimate stories, told in her heart alone, she was the hero, and not the heroine. And may this not help us on our way? Men have less need to imagine a world with themselves as centre, because they more nearly possess it in reality. It is the woman's life that is more hedged about; and what she has not, she seeks. Fancy is the great supplement of reality, the correcter of its lacks; and in its realm the moral law is reversed, and to him that hath not shall be given.

Indeed if we wish to stimulate the imagination, what better device could be conceived than to fan desire and hinder the act itself? Where the world offers a hundred outlets for will and energy, there is less occasion to live an imagined life. Your weakling boy it is who dreams of feats of strength. 'On account of a physical infirmity which I have had since my early childhood,'

writes a youth I know, 'I was always very much alone; and my great diversion was the weaving of tales-of myself in characters which I could never hope to fulfill - such as sailor, soldier, or adventurer.' This is the old truth which Professor Shaler illustrates in his autobiography, that as an unusually timid boy he persistently thought of himself in deeds of bravery in war. It is also tender, frail Stevenson over again, who in drollery, yet with a shade of wistfulness, saw heaven as a place where we might all at last be pirates.

In the imagination, then, our prison doors fly open. And just because each human life is in some degree imprisoned, does each of us love a tale. But those who are more restricted in act, while yet free and rich in impulse and in longing, will seek more eagerly to act in fancy.

Now the male has within him the demon of unrest, and the social restraints with him are less; and in his freedom, tense with real risks, he feels less call for mimic striving. In business, in the control of police and railways, in litigation, and in war, he finds almost enough to quench his thirst for personal clash. But woman, with a nervous vitality and a passion surely no whit below man's, yet with less muscular strength and with social confines which hitherto have given her a less changing and perilous work than man's - what wonder if her energies, blocked in their outward flow, should burst over into imaginary action? As both boys and girls compose their tales, I find, far oftener when the body is still-sitting, or in bed while not asleep - than when it is active; so it is in harmony with this that women should in their greater bodily quiet and weakness prepare a warmer welcome for fancied deeds. Their life is less agile and closer to the gates of dreams.

Not only is the boy's imagination

hindered and by vigorous action made less passionate, but even such power as he possesses will probably be commandeered to other work. The imagination, we must remember, can be either bond or free, while yet it is imagination. It may be free, restrained only by restraints which our taste and enjoyment impose — imagination essentially for its own sake. Or it may be used as a means for some other end, pressed into the service of invention or discovery, of theory, of social and political reform-where the imagination is something more than drudge and less than mistress.

Now man's demon, in driving him to arduous employment, drives with him his imagination. Woman also works; but as she gains freedom from the squaw's millstone and hoe and bearing of burdens, there does not come in their place at least not yet that pressure of profession and commerce and organized craft, with their fixed hours and high momentum and all that monetary gauge of success that keeps the male with soul and body at the wheel. With us the women still govern the home and child — a work whose driving energy is not so high, more guided by quiet traditions, commonly less insistent and engrossing upon the mind. The grievance of some who would rightly enlarge woman's life is, that her traditional labor has too much of monotone and provides no interest and open door. But without wishing it for her, we may recognize that what is unfavorable to life may favor a certain quality of imagination. The very humdrum of household duties, as many a young woman has assured me, may send the mind off to build castles in the clouds. Man's work is so absorbing, so full of stake, that this doubling of the stream-actual performance running by the side of imaginary performance - is often quite impossible. He must