False Romance In The Short Story.

Consider the following two plots:—

(1)	Beautiful girl from poor home works for modiste; blues her savings on model frock; wearing it for first time is caught in rain and offered lift by expensive young man in expensive car. Acquaintance develops. Girl pretends to belong to leisured class. Young man proposes marriage and is joyfully accepted, despite the fact that he had seen through her subterfuge from the start.
(2)	Wealthy young playwright registers at hotel in assumed name. Makes acquaintance of beautiful young girl who turns out to be actress down on her luck. His Rolls Royce reveals him as wealthy man. Girl reproaches him for deception but accepts weddingring and lead in his new play.

One of these plots was culled from a leading English fiction magazine, and the other from an obscure women's weekly. One was by a noted English novelist, the other by an unknown woman scribbler. Plot for plot it is impossible to place one before the other, though I will concede the novelist slight superiority in presentation. The remuneration alone serves to differentiate between the known and the unknown, the former probably receiving page 42 for one short story what the latter might be lucky enough to earn by her pen in one year.

For sugary-sweetness and shoddy romance, the stories are on a par. Let us only hope that the novelist, at least, realised that he was degrading his art; that, instead of depicting life as it is, harsh with fears and failures, beautiful in self-triumphs and ideals, he was creating a false and harmful impression of existence.

Physical beauty, for instance, should not be the only admirable attribute of a heroine, nor handsome features and a large bank-roll of a hero. The idea is farcical. Our two writers have been busily creating false values. The joys of life are not those money can buy, yet we have these foolish stories appealing to the vanity and greed of young people. In most cases, a fuller experience of life will probably provide a truer sense of values, but ideas culled from sentimental literature may have already falsely oriented a young life.

Admittedly, editors are forced to publish the best available instead of the best possible. It behoves us therefore to read always with a critical eye lest our own sense of values be impaired; best of all, to refrain from reading that which is obviously unreal.

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