 Studies of the character and evolution of the Chilean short story have established categorically that Federico Gana is the authentic discoverer of the Chilean countryside as a theme of national literature.Coming from the modernista envirornment of the end of the 19th Century, his early stories reveal a natural vacillation between the subjective and fleeting tendency that inspired modernism, and the utilization of the concrete motives offered by the natural environment of the countryside.In this manner, with his first published story in 1890, "¡Pobre vieja!"