Why must we confine the reading of our children to the older
literary classics? This is the question asked by an ever-
increasing number of thoughtful teachers. They have no wish to
displace or to discredit the classics. On the contrary, they love
and revere them. But they do wish to give their pupils something
additional, something that pulses with present life, that is
characteristic of to-day. The children, too, wonder that, with the
great literary outpouring going on about them, they must always
fill their cups from the cisterns of the past.
The short story is especially adapted to supplement our high-
school reading. It is of a piece with our varied, hurried,
efficient American life, wherein figure the business man's lunch,
the dictagraph, the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile, and
the railway "limited." It has achieved high art, yet conforms to
the modern demand that our literature--since it must be read with
despatch, if read at all--be compact and compelling. Moreover, the
short story is with us in almost overwhelming numbers, and is
probably here to stay. Indeed, our boys and girls are somewhat
appalled at the quantity of material from which they must select
their reading, and welcome any instruction that enables them to
know the good from the bad. It is certain, therefore, that,
whatever else they may throw into the educational discard when
they leave the high school, they will keep and use anything they
may have learned about this form of literature which has become so
powerful a factor in our daily life.
This book does not attempt to select the greatest stories of the
time. What tribunal would dare make such a choice? Nor does it
attempt to trace the evolution of the short story or to point out
natural types and differences. These topics are better suited to
college classes. Its object is threefold: to supply interesting
reading belonging to the student's own time, to help him to see
that there is no divorce between classic and modern literature,
and, by offering him material structurally good and typical of the
qualities represented, to assist him in discriminating between the
artistic and the inartistic. The stories have been carefully
selected, because in the period of adolescence "nothing read fails
to leave its mark"; [Footnote: G Stanley Hall, Adolescence, vol.
II.] they have also been carefully arranged with a view to the
needs of the adolescent boy and girl. Stories of the type loved by
primitive man, and therefore easily approached and understood,
have been placed first. Those which appealed in periods of higher
development follow, roughly in the order of their increasing
difficulty. It is hoped, moreover, that this arrangement will help
the student to understand and appreciate the development of the
story. He begins with the simple tale of adventure and the simple
story of character. As he advances he sees the story develop in
plot, in character analysis, and in setting, until he ends with
the psychological study of Markheim, remarkable for its complexity
of motives and its great spiritual problem. Both the selection and
the arrangement have been made with this further purpose in view--
"to keep the heart warm, reinforcing all its good motives,
preforming choices, universalizing sympathies." [Footnote: Ibid.]
It is a pleasure to acknowledge, in this connection, the
suggestions and the criticism of Mr. William N. Otto, Head of the
Department of English in Shortridge High School, Indianapolis; and
the courtesies of the publishers who have permitted the use of
their material.