The Country of the Blind | Page 3

that matter. I refuse altogether to recognise any hard and fast type for the Short Story, any more than I admit any limitation upon the liberties of the Small Picture. The short story is a fiction that may be read in something under an hour, and so that it is moving and delightful, it does not matter whether it is as "trivial" as a Japanese print of insects seen closely between grass stems, or as spacious as the prospect of the plain of Italy from Monte Mottarone. It does not matter whether it is human or inhuman, or whether it leaves you thinking deeply or radiantly but superficially pleased. Some things are more easily done as short stories than others and more abundantly done, but one of the many pleasures of short-story writing is to achieve the impossible.
At any rate, that is the present writer's conception of the art of the short story, as the jolly art of making something very bright and moving; it may be horrible or pathetic or funny or beautiful or profoundly illuminating, having only this essential, that it should take from fifteen to fifty minutes to read aloud. All the rest is just whatever invention and imagination and the mood can give--a vision of buttered slides on a busy day or of unprecedented worlds. In that spirit of miscellaneous expectation these stories should be received. Each is intended to be a thing by itself; and if it is not too ungrateful to kindly and enterprising publishers, I would confess I would much prefer to see each printed expensively alone, and left in a little brown-paper cover to lie about a room against the needs of a quite casual curiosity. And I would rather this volume were found in the bedrooms of convalescents and in dentists' parlours and railway trains than in gentlemen's studies. I would rather have it dipped in and dipped in again than read severely through. Essentially it is a miscellany of inventions, many of which were very pleasant to write; and its end is more than attained if some of them are refreshing and agreeable to read. I have now re-read them all, and I am glad to think I wrote them. I like them, but I cannot tell how much the associations of old happinesses gives them a flavour for me. I make no claims for them and no apology; they will be read as long as people read them. Things written either live or die; unless it be for a place of judgment upon Academic impostors, there is no apologetic intermediate state.
I may add that I have tried to set a date to most of these stories, but that they are not arranged in strictly chronological order.
H. G. WELLS.

CONTENTS.
I. THE JILTING OF JANE
II. THE CONE
III. THE STOLEN BACILLUS
IV. THE FLOWERING OF THE STRANGE ORCHID
V. THE AVU OBSERVATORY
VI. AEPYORNIS ISLAND
VII. THE REMARKABLE CASE OF DAVIDSON'S EYES.
VIII. THE LORD OF THE DYNAMOS.
IX. THE MOTH
X. THE TREASURE IN THE FOREST
XI. THE STORY OF THE LATE MR. ELVESHAM
XII. UNDER THE KNIFE
XIII. THE SEA RAIDERS
XIV. THE OBLITERATED MAN
XV. THE PLATTNER STORY
XVI. THE RED ROOM
XVII. THE PURPLE PILEUS
XVIII. A SLIP UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
XIX. THE CRYSTAL EGG
XX. THE STAR
XXI. THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES
XXII. A VISION OF JUDGMENT
XXIII. JIMMY GOGGLES THE GOD
XXIV. MISS WINCHELSEA'S HEART
XXV. A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON
XXVI. THE VALLEY OF SPIDERS
XXVII. THE NEW ACCELERATOR
XXVIII. THE TRUTH ABOUT PYECRAFT
XXIX. THE MAGIC SHOP
XXX. THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTS
XXXI. THE DOOR IN THE WALL
XXXII. THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
XXXIII. THE BEAUTIFUL SUIT

I.
THE JILTING OF JANE.
As I sit writing in my study, I can hear our Jane bumping her way downstairs with a brush and dust-pan. She used in the old days to sing hymn tunes, or the British national song for the time being, to these instruments, but latterly she has been silent and even careful over her work. Time was when I prayed with fervour for such silence, and my wife with sighs for such care, but now they have come we are not so glad as we might have anticipated we should be. Indeed, I would rejoice secretly, though it may be unmanly weakness to admit it, even to hear Jane sing "Daisy," or, by the fracture of any plate but one of Euphemia's best green ones, to learn that the period of brooding has come to an end.
Yet how we longed to hear the last of Jane's young man before we heard the last of him! Jane was always very free with her conversation to my wife, and discoursed admirably in the kitchen on a variety of topics--so well, indeed, that I sometimes left my study door open--our house is a small one--to partake of it. But after William came, it was always William, nothing but William; William this and William that; and when