_The sixty short stories published in the American magazines between
January and October, 1918, which I shall discuss in this article are
chosen from a larger group of about one hundred and twenty stories,
whose literary excellence justifies me in including them in my annual
“Roll of Honor.” The stories which are included in this Roll of Honor
have been chosen from the stories published in seventy-four American
periodicals during the first ten months of 1918. In selecting them I
have sought to accept the author’s point of view and manner of
treatment, and to measure simply his degree of success in accomplishing
what he set out to achieve. I have permitted no personal preference or
prejudice to influence my mind consciously for or against a story. But I
must confess that it has been difficult to eliminate personal admiration
completely in the further winnowing which has resulted in this selection
of sixty stories. Below are set forth the particular qualities which
have seemed to me to justify in each case the inclusion of a story in
this list._
1. _A Simple Act of Piety_, by _Achmed Abdullah_ (The All-Story Weekly).
To those who enjoyed last year Thomas Burke’s “Limehouse Nights,” the
series of Pell Street stories which Captain Abdullah is publishing in
the Century Magazine, Collier’s Weekly, and the All-Story Weekly will be
welcome. To a vivid sense of color and an economy of dramatic situation,
“A Simple Act of Piety,” which is the best of these stories, adds a fine
appreciation of the Oriental point of view. The characterization is
almost subjective it is so real, and the story is a fine crystallization
of the poetry inherent in New York Chinatown life.
2. _The Man of Ideas_, by _Sherwood Anderson_ (Little Review), points
the way to a new American realism. Those who have read Mr. Anderson’s
other Winesburg stories in the Seven Arts and the Little Review will
remember that he has set himself the task of portraying the spiritual
values of a small Ohio community without sentimentality. These stories
suggest the Spoon River Anthology, and indeed the tradition inaugurated
by Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, and other realists of the new
Chicago School seems likely to carry on the vision of Walt Whitman to
new goals of achievement.
3. _Cruelties_ (Harper’s Magazine) and 4. “_Goddess Size_” (Harper’s
Magazine), by _Edwina Stanton Babcock_. When Miss Babcock published “The
Excursion” last year in the Pictorial Review, I expressed my belief that
it was one of the best five American short stories of the year. I regard
these two stories as marking a significant advance in Miss Babcock’s
art. Her characterization of these Nantucket folks has a subtle humor
and poetry linked to a faithful realism. Miss Babcock continues to prove
herself a leader in short-story regionalism. “Cruelties” is very quietly
done and no point is over-stressed. In fact I find a greater reticence
in these stories than in Miss Babcock’s earlier work, and this is all to
the good.
5. _The Bell-Tower of P’An-Ku_, by “_John Brangwyn_” (Century Magazine).
This story by an American novelist, whose name is not to be revealed,
comes with a definite message to Americans from China. It is an allegory
quietly setting forth the essence of the imaginative attitude toward
life. Like a shifting tapestry, pictures weave to and fro, and the way
is opened to us to see the vision that the unknown Chinese master saw.
6. _Buster_, by _Katharine Holland Brown_ (Scribner’s Magazine). Here in
clear swift portraiture Miss Brown has caught the spirit of America,
youthful and eager, living dangerously and happily, and prepared to face
danger, and, if necessary, seek it. “Buster” is a study of the typical
young American who finds himself at last as an aviator in France. No
story could better interpret our spirit to the English and French
imagination.
7. _The Sorry Tale of Hennery K. Lunk_, by _Ellis Parker Butler_
(Harper’s Magazine). This tale of a mournful mariner ashore on the banks
of the Mississippi would have delighted Mark Twain. I hope Mr. Butler
will forgive me if I state that it contains more poetry than prose. But
after all, mournful mariners come and go, while their stories go on
forever.
8. _The Black Pearl_, by _Katharine Butler_ (Atlantic Monthly). This
story, redolent of the East, is an admirable study in atmosphere. It has
all the nostalgia of a half-forgotten dream, and yet it is so
confidently set forth that we may enter its background without
difficulty. Style is not a common quality, I regret to say, in American
short stories, but the picture portrayed in “The Black Pearl” is well
nigh flawless.
9. _Some Ladies and Jurgen_, by _James Branch Cabell_ (Smart Set), is a
wilful apologue of poets and their wives which will delight the
thoughtful while disappointing the serious. It is really a prose poem
without any moral whatever, unless perhaps the moral Miss Guiney once
pointed out when she said that tall talk always reminded her of the
Himalayas. I commend the fable to all would-be poets.
10. _The Gallowsmith_, by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (All-Story Weekly). This
story, which marks a great departure from Mr. Cobb’s usual vein, is one
of the most grim stories an American magazine has ever published, but it
is a masterly portrait of a professional hangman which the reader cannot
easily forget. With vivid completeness of detail, and characterization
which is admirably suggestive, Mr. Cobb manages the situation in such a
way that its conclusion is inevitable, yet unexpected.
11. _The Open Window_, by _Charles Caldwell Dobie_ (Harper’s Magazine),
is a sequel to “Laughter,” which I published last year as one of the
best short stories of 1917. Unlike most sequels, it is perhaps better
than its predecessor, and the mastery of his art which Mr. Dobie shows
only serves to confirm my prediction of two years ago, that in Mr. Dobie
America would find before long one of its four or five best short-story
writers. An adventurous publisher, anxious to issue the best that is
being written in American fiction, cannot afford to neglect Mr. Dobie.
12. _The Emerald of Tamerlane_, by _H. G. Dwight and John Taylor_
(Century Magazine). Every discriminating reader knows H. G. Dwight’s
book of short stories entitled “Stamboul Nights,” and admires its
quality of romantic mystery and poetic description. “The Emerald of
Tamerlane” admirably sustains Mr. Dwight’s reputation for vivid
realization of Persian life.
13. _Blind Vision_, by _Mary Mitchell Freedley_ (Century Magazine). This
story, by S. Weir Mitchell’s granddaughter, marks not only Mrs.
Freedley’s first appearance in print, but the arrival of a remarkable
new talent. It is a study of an American aviator and a spiritual problem
that he had to decide, and is set down with exceptional artistic
economy.
14. _The Irish of It_, by _Cornelia Throop Geer_ (Atlantic Monthly).
This little study, which is hardly more than a dialogue, is inimitable
in its deft humorous characterization. It is good news to be able to
report that Miss Geer is planning a volume of stories about these Irish
boys and girls whose poetry of thought and action is so coaxing.
15. _Imagination_, by _Gordon Hall Gerould_ (Scribner’s Magazine).
Captain Gerould has taken his subject quietly and handled it with a
thoughtful sense of its possibilities. This study of a successful writer
of best sellers, with his egregious solemnity and lack of imagination,
is delightfully rendered. The subtlety of the author’s psychology will
not blind the reader to its essential truth.
16. _Marchpane_, by _Katharine Fullerton Gerould_ (Harper’s Magazine).
Mrs. Gerould has only published one short story this year, but
fortunately it ranks among her best. It is written with all her usual
close observation of abnormal psychological situations. The art of few
stories is concealed so successfully, and the story is one of which
Henry James would have been proud.
17. _In Maulmain Fever-Ward_, by _George Gilbert_. This story, which
appeared in a Chicago magazine, is the first of an unusual series of
stories dealing with East Indian life. It is full of a wild poetry of
speech and action, set against a background of almost oppressive natural
beauty. I think that the story would have gained by a little more
reticence, but the groundwork is firm and the detail admirably rendered.
18. “_Beloved Husband_” (Harper’s Magazine) and 19. “_Poor Ed_” (The
Liberator), by _Susan Glaspell_. Susan Glaspell has already won a high
reputation in three equally difficult fields, those of the novel, the
drama, and the short story. Considering her as a short-story writer
only, we may say that these two stories reflect the best that she has
done, with the possible exception of the story entitled “A Jury of Her
Peers,” which I reprinted in “The Best Short Stories of 1917.” Both are
studies in suppressed ambition, set forth with a gentle humor which does
not fail by virtue of overstress. Susan Glaspell is at her best in “Poor
Ed,” a study in the triumph of failure.
20. _Sinjinn Surviving_, by _Armistead C. Gordon_ (Harper’s Magazine).
This story is one more addition to Mr. Gordon’s studies of Virginia
negro plantation life. It introduces us once more to Ommirandy and Uncle
Jonas, and is a quiet idyl of the life that survived in Virginia after
the fall of the Confederacy.
21. _Even So_, by _Charles Boardman Hawes_ (The Bellman). The art of Mr.
Hawes has developed so quietly during the past few years that it has not
attracted the attention it richly deserves. This study of life and death
many years ago in the Southern Seas recaptures much of the magic of the
old sailing-ship days when the _Helen of Troy_ and other American
clippers came bravely into port. The story has a fine legendary quality.
22. _Decay_, by _Ben Hecht_ (Little Review). When Mr. Hecht published
“Life” in the Little Review some few years ago I predicted that the
future would reveal the fulfilment of his remarkable promise, although I
was not quite sure whether Mr. Hecht would find himself most fully in
the short story or in the novel. During these years his output has been
small but distinguished, and the present study of Chicago life shows a
marked advance in technique. Nevertheless I now think that the novel is
Mr. Hecht’s natural vehicle, and that when his first novel appears it
will create a profound literary impression.
23. _Their War_, by _Hetty Hemenway_ (Atlantic Monthly). When Miss
Hemenway published “Four Days” in the Atlantic Monthly last year, it
created more discussion than any other war story of the year. Her new
story, which is in as quiet a key, represents an advance in her art, and
the two stories taken together represent one of the few important
contributions America has made to the imaginative literature of the war.
The war has taught us that youth is old enough, under the stress of
events, to speak for itself, and there is a brave frankness about Mrs.
Richard’s exposition of this truth which brings it home to all.
24. _At the Back of God Speed_, by _Rupert Hughes_ (Hearst’s Magazine).
Three years ago Mr. Hughes published in the Metropolitan Magazine two
stories which were as fine in their way as the best of Irvin Cobb’s
humorous stories. In “Michaeleen! Michaelawn!” and “Sent for Out” Mr.
Hughes depicted with his wonted kindliness and pathos the first
generation of successful Irish immigrants. “At the Back of God Speed”
now completes the series, which form as a whole the most faithful
portrait yet drawn of the Americanized Irishman.
25. _The Father’s Hand_, by _George Humphrey_ (The Bookman). Although
Mr. Humphrey was born in England he has now definitely adopted us and I
suppose we may claim him as an American writer. This brief and touching
study of one minor incident in the Great War shows a fine sense of human
values, whose artistic effect is enhanced by deliberate understatement.
26. _Her’s_ _NOT_ _to Reason Why_, by _Fannie Hurst_ (Cosmopolitan).
This story was published in 1917, when it unaccountably failed to
attract my attention, and as an act of prosaic justice I now chronicle
it, because I believe it to be the best story Miss Hurst has yet
published. The temptation to oversentimentalize the theme must have been
almost irresistible, but the author has not failed in reticence and this
study of a certain aspect of New York life will not be soon forgotten.
27. _The Little Family_ (Harper’s Magazine) and 28. _The Visit of the
Master_ (Harper’s Magazine), by _Arthur Johnson_. These stories have
nothing in common except the fact that they reinforce Mr. Johnson’s
claim this year to rank with Mrs. Gerould, Wilbur Daniel Steele, H. G.
Dwight, and Charles Caldwell Dobie as one of the most finished artists
in America to-day. “The Visit of the Master” is an altogether delightful
social comedy, not without a moral. “The Little Family,” on the other
hand, is a poignant study of the effect of war on the gentle
imaginations of two lonely men. Its quality makes us think of the
relation between Stevenson and his old nurse, and stylistically it is
admirable. I suggest with all diffidence, and from a point of view of
frank personal preference that it is very possibly the best short story
of the year.
29. _In the Open Code_, by _Burton Kline_ (The Stratford Journal). This
brief tale in sharp outline recounts a single human incident. Romantic
in treatment, it is told with the eye on the object. It is a finished
piece of workmanship.
30. _The Willow Walk_, by _Sinclair Lewis_ (Saturday Evening Post). It
was an interesting problem which presented itself to Mr. Lewis when he
thought of writing this story. Could a criminal of marked intellectual
ability create a dual personality for himself by inventing an imaginary
brother, give up his own personality after his crime, and live on
undetected in the continuous imaginative realization of his new
personality? Mr. Lewis has studied the psychological effects of such a
successful impersonation and shown the destructive force of mental
suggestion on the soul, in a manner which is in interesting contrast to
that employed by Charles Caldwell Dobie in the story which I have
mentioned above.
31. _The Haymakers_ (Stratford Journal) and 32. _Old Lady Hudson_ (The
Midland), by _Jeannette Marks_. These two allegorical stories are
written in what is usually a most hazardous literary form. I think that
Miss Marks has steered clear of Scylla and Charybdis successfully, and
pointed out to a somewhat deaf world the imaginative realities which
underlie the commercial crust of our American civilization. These
stories, and others of similar tenor, are to be published shortly in a
volume entitled “Forgotten Sins.”
33. _Nettle and Foxglove_, by _Marjory Morten_ (Century Magazine). This
is a study in conflicting temperaments which is very gently rendered
with an art that recalls in its subtlety that of Miss Ethel Sidgwick’s
novels. A collection of Mrs. Morten’s studies, reprinted from the files
of the Century Magazine, would make an interesting volume.
34. _The Story Vinton Heard at Mallorie_, by _Katharine Prescott
Moseley_ (Scribner’s Magazine). Miss Moseley, who is a niece of Mrs.
Harriet Prescott Spofford, shares with Mrs. Frances G. Wood the
distinction of having contributed one of the two most enduring legends
this year to the supernatural literature of the war. One of the most
significant aspects of the American short story during the past two
years has been its increasing preoccupation with supernatural beliefs,
especially as they have a bearing on the fortunes of the war. Arthur
Machen perhaps inaugurated this movement with his remarkable story about
the angels of Mons, but the spirit was implicit before that in much
American work. In editing a series of War Echoes for The Bookman last
year, I had occasion to read the manuscripts of several hundred war
stories, and it was a gratifying surprise to find that fully sixty per
cent of these stories dealt with some supernatural aspect of the war.
35. _Clouds_, by _Walter L. Myers_ (The Midland). This remarkable study
of place is one of the best stories so far produced in the literary
revival throughout the Middle West which centres around the nucleus of
The Midland. I wish that The Midland would publish a volume of stories
selected from its columns during the last three years. Such a book would
quickly earn a permanent place on our shelves.
36. _Owen Carey_, by _Harvey J. O’Higgins_ (The Century Magazine). I
believe this story to be the most distinguished in the series of
imaginary American portraits that Mr. O’Higgins has been publishing
during the past two years. These studies aim to take as a starting point
the lives of men and women successful in many different fields, and to
depict in each case the thing which may have seemed perfectly trivial at
the time, but which actually proved to be the turning point in their
careers. It is such an incident in the life of a successful romantic
novelist which Mr. O’Higgins portrays in this story.
37. _The Second-Rater_, by _James Oppenheim_ (Century Magazine). In this
brilliant study of artistic temperament, Mr. Oppenheim portrays the
spiritual struggle of an artist in such a way as to reveal the finer
grain. The author has been clearly influenced by Henry James, but the
texture of his story is a little loosely woven.
38. _Unto Each His Crown_, by _Norma Patterson_ (The Bookman). This
nervously written study of death in battle and the discovery it awakened
is the work of a new writer who should have a brilliant future if my
judgment does not betray me. Like Miss Moseley’s story, it is a study in
the supernatural implications of the war. There is a proud joy in it
which the reader will find infectious.
39. _His Escape_, by _Will Payne_ (Saturday Evening Post). I regard this
as the best newspaper story published in America since “The Stolen
Story.” It has quick dramatic action, well stressed conflict, clean-cut
characterization, and a thoroughly adequate conclusion. If the style is
somewhat staccato, this is perhaps in harmony with the character of the
story.
40. _The Toast to Forty-Five_, by _William Dudley Pelley_ (Pictorial
Review). Mr. Pelley has “the human touch.” His stories of Paris,
Vermont, have a homely quality which never over-stresses the emotional
values, even when it almost seems as if the author were going to
sentimentalize them. No work could be more indigenous to the soil. Its
very roughnesses are a product of environment. Though Mr. Pelley as yet
entirely lacks style, there is a driving force within him which should
finally shape a personal style in much the same manner as may be
observed in the evolution of Irvin S. Cobb’s best work.
41. _The Poet_, by _Lawrence Perry_ (Harper’s Magazine). This story is a
study in courage similar in quality to “A Certain Rich Man,” which I
published last year in “The Best Short Stories of 1917.” It is very
deliberately built up as a literary problem, but with unquestionable
artistic sincerity. It would have been easy to key this story too
tightly from an emotional point of view, but Mr. Perry’s feeling in the
matter has been sure.
42. _Green Umbrellas_, by _Lucy Pratt_ (Pictorial Review). Symbolism is
woven into this story as modestly as in “The Sun Chaser” by Jeannette
Marks, which appeared in the same magazine during 1916. Miss Pratt has
abandoned her negro character stories for the time being, and written
about a little boy who brings his parents together. It is slightly
sentimentalized, but this is a weakness which the other excellent
qualities of the story largely neutralize.
43. _David and Jonathan_, by _Mary Brecht Pulver_ (Mother’s Magazine).
This idyl of boyhood friendship, which may not have come to the
attention of many readers, has interested me as much as Roland Pertwee’s
notable study of adolescence, entitled “Red and White.” It is a study in
loyalties seen from a boy’s point of view, mirroring as it does later,
if no firmer, loyalties of men and women.
44. _The Sixth Man_, by _George Palmer Putnam_ (Ladies’ Home Journal).
It is claimed by the author of this story that it is based on fact.
Whether this is so or not, it is an interesting study of a possible
historical situation woven around the death of Edith Cavell. It seems to
me a made story rather than a told story, but granting this weakness
which has not been sufficiently covered, it is noteworthy in its way.
45. _Extra Men_, by _Harrison Rhodes_ (Harper’s Magazine). This story is
an instance of atmosphere perfectly realized in brief compass. But it is
more than that. It is a new legend for American literature fairly
comparable to Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and Hawthorne’s “The Gray
Champion,” in its portraiture of Washington and all the armies of the
American dead sailing for France with the American troopships in the
morning.
46. _Daffodils_, by _Anne Douglas Sedgwick_ (Atlantic Monthly). Of the
series of stories based on the symbolism of flowers which Mrs. de
Sélincourt has contributed during the past few years to American
magazines, “Daffodils” is probably the best. Full of the spirit of young
England and the many thousand youths mown in Flanders like a field of
daffodils in glad surrender, this story reflects the spiritual analogies
of the flower in the human heart. It is the same spirit of eternal
English youth which is reflected in Rupert Brooke’s last sonnets.
47. _Release_, by _Elsie Singmaster_ (Pictorial Review). One more memory
of Lincoln, uniting the tradition of the Civil War with the tradition of
the present war, is evoked by Elsie Singmaster in this story. There is
very little action in “Release” of a physical kind, but the spiritual
values are dynamic, and the story is told with a processional dignity
attained in other stories only by this author.
48. _The Return_, by _Gordon Arthur Smith_ (Scribner’s Magazine). From
the romantic fortunes of Ferdinand Taillandy, Mr. Smith has turned to a
poignant study of French war life. With great reticence and gentleness
he has idealized the return of a soldier home to his greatest desire,
and so added one more to the notable chronicles of supernatural life
which the war has evoked from American artists.
49. _Solitaire_, by _Fleta Campbell Springer_ (Harper’s Magazine). I
regard this as one of the two best short stories of the year, though in
saying so I wish to put forward no more than a personal judgment. The
character whom Mrs. Springer has created is unlike any other in American
fiction, and yet, in his modesty, efficiency, and sensitiveness, a most
natural American individual. There are many different passions for
perfection among men, most of them secret, and of these I think that the
passion of Corey is not the least noble.
50. _The Dark Hour_ (Atlantic Monthly), 51. _A Taste of the Old Boy_
(Collier’s Weekly), and 52. _The Wages of Sin_ (Pictorial Review), by
_Wilbur Daniel Steele_. Once more it is necessary to affirm that Wilbur
Daniel Steele shares with Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould the
distinction of first place among contemporary American short-story
artists. I still think that “Ching, Ching, Chinaman” is the best short
story that Mr. Steele has yet written, and that its only close rival is
“A White Horse Winter,” but “The Dark Hour” I should place third in an
anthology of Mr. Steele’s stories, and first in an anthology of American
war stories. In its message to the American people it yields in
significance only to the best of President Wilson’s state papers, and
serves to crystallize the issue before the country in this war as
unforgetably as William Vaughn Moody crystallized the war issue less
than twenty years ago in his “Ode in Time of Hesitation,” also published
in the Atlantic Monthly. In the light of present events, Mr. Steele’s
message has only increased in significance. Of the two other stories,
“The Wages of Sin” takes its rightful place with the other Urkey Island
stories which I have discussed in the past. “A Taste of the Old Boy” is
one more war legend for our anthology.
53. _The Bird of Serbia_, by _Julian Street_ (Collier’s Weekly).
Repeatedly in the course of this article I have had occasion to point
out that the best of the year’s war stories are creating new legends.
How a bird in a cage in a little Serbian village may have been the cause
of the Great War is persuasively set forth by Mr. Street in this story.
The conclusion is one of the best examples of a justifiable surprise
ending that I know of, and the human quality of Mr. Street’s
characterization renders its inherent improbability psychologically
convincing.
54. _The Three Zoölogical Wishes_, by _Booth Tarkington_ (Collier’s
Weekly). This is the most amusing study of adolescence that Mr.
Tarkington has given us. It has countless subtle touches of observation
which quietly build up two remarkably accurate portraits. I regard it as
the best of the new series which Mr. Tarkington has been publishing in
Collier’s Weekly.
55. _Five Rungs Gone_, by _Albert W. Tolman_ (Youth’s Companion). For
many years the most interesting weekly feature of the Youth’s Companion
has been the danger story in which the youthful hero escapes from
extraordinary peril by virtue of courage and great intellectual
ingenuity. Most of these stories are built on a regular formula and
cannot claim much literary value. But now and then a situation is so
vividly realized, and the situation so logically deduced, that the story
has literary justification. And “Five Rungs Gone” is altogether
exceptional in this respect.
56. _At Isham’s_, by _Edward C. Venable_ (Scribner’s Magazine). The zest
of this story consists in the intellectual subtlety of mental conflict.
It contrasts the characters of several _habitués_ of a New York café who
form a little group each night for endless discussion. The value of the
story rests in the manner in which events bring out variations in
character, and the solution of the story is as absorbing as a chess
problem.
57. _De Vilmarte’s Luck_ (Harper’s Magazine) and 58. _Huntington’s
Credit_ (Harper’s Magazine), by _Mary Heaton Vorse_. In these two
stories there is a marked contrast of subject matter. “De Vilmarte’s
Luck” is a study of the artistic temperament, with fine ironies keenly
portrayed. The war provides the story with a solution which reveals the
finer grain. In “Huntington’s Credit” we have a study in suppressed
desires, very quietly told, with a poignancy softened somehow by the
quality of character. In these two stories Mary Heaton Vorse has given
us the best work written by her in the last four years.
59. _The White Battalion_, by _Frances Gilchrist Wood_ (The Bookman).
Here is the last of the fine supernatural legends inspired during the
past year by the Great War. The White Battalion of the dead which fights
on the side of the Allies is comparable to the marching host seen by
Harrison Rhodes in “Extra Men,” but there is an _élan_ in this story
which suggests a deeper spiritual background.
60. _In the House of Morphy_, by _John Seymour Wood_ (Scribner’s
Magazine). This legend of old New Orleans has the romantic glow of Mr.
Cable’s best novels linked to a well-developed plot with a fine quality
of logical surprise. It is one of the best stories written by a
fastidious artist of the old school who appears seldom in our magazines,
and always with the finest substance that he can give.