however, his predictions concerning floods or droughts that ro

I published them at last in book form, because I felt that no
definitive edition of my books ought to appear--and
I had then a definitive edition in my mind--without these stories
which represented an early phase in my work. Whatever their
degree of merit, they possess freshness
and individuality of
outlook. Others could no doubt have written them
better, but none could have written them with quite the same touch or
turn or individuality; and, after all, what we want in the art of
fiction is not a story alone,

not an incident of life or soul simply as an incident, b