“I could not, at first, be certain that this was meant for me.

If I were to explain to you why I have not written for so long

a time, I might give you one of the few clews which I insist on

keeping in my own hands. In your public capacity, you have been

(so far as a woman may judge) upright, independent, wholly manly:

in your relations with other men I learn nothing of you that is

not honorable: towards women you are kind, chivalrous, no doubt,

overflowing with the _usual_ social refinements, but-- Here,

again, I run hard upon the absolute necessity of silence. The way

to me, if you care to traverse it, is so simple, so very simple!

Yet, after what I have written, I cannot even wave my hand in the

direction of it, without certain self-contempt. When I feel free to

tell you, we shall draw apart and remain unknown forever.

“You desire to write? I do not prohibit it. I have heretofore made

no arrangement for hearing from you, in turn, because I could not

discover that any advantage would accrue from it. But it seems only

fair, I confess, and you dare not think me capricious. So, three

days hence, at six o’clock in the evening, a trusty messenger of

mine will call at your door. If you have anything to give her for

me, the act of giving it must be the sign of a compact on your

part, that you will allow her to leave immediately, unquestioned

and unfollowed.”

You look puzzled, I see: you don’t catch the real drift of her words?

Well,--that’s a melancholy encouragement. Neither did I, at the

time: it was plain that I had disappointed her in some way, and my

intercourse with, or manner towards, women, had something to do with

it. In vain I ran over as much of my later social life as I could

recall. There had been no special attention, nothing to mislead a

susceptible heart; on the other side, certainly no rudeness, no want of

“chivalrous” (she used the word!) respect and attention. What, in the

name of all the gods, was the matter?

In spite of all my efforts to grow clearer, I was obliged to write

my letter in a rather muddled state of mind. I had _so_ much to say!

sixteen folio pages, I was sure, would only suffice for an introduction

to the case; yet, when the creamy vellum lay before me and the moist

pen drew my fingers towards it, I sat stock dumb for half an hour. I

wrote, finally, in a half-desperate mood, without regard to coherency

or logic. Here’s a rough draft of a part of the letter, and a single

passage from it will be enough:--

“I can conceive of no simpler way to you than the knowledge of your

name and address. I have drawn airy images of you, but they do not

become incarnate, and I am not sure that I should recognize you

in the brief moment of passing. Your nature is not of those which

are instantly legible. As an abstract power, it has wrought in

my life and it continually moves my heart with desires which are

unsatisfactory because so vague and ignorant. Let me offer you,

personally, my gratitude, my earnest friendship: you would laugh if

I were _now_ to offer more.”

Stay! here is another fragment, more reckless in tone:--

“I want to find the woman whom I can love--who can love me. But

this is a masquerade where the features are hidden, the voice

disguised, even the hands grotesquely gloved. Come! I will venture

more than I ever thought was possible to me. You shall know my

deepest nature as I myself seem to know it. Then, give me the

commonest chance of learning yours, through an intercourse which

shall leave both free, should we not feel the closing of the

inevitable bond!”

After I had written that, the pages filled rapidly. When the appointed

hour arrived, a bulky epistle, in a strong linen envelope, sealed with

five wax seals, was waiting on my table. Precisely at six there was an

announcement: the door opened, and a little outside, in the shadow, I

saw an old woman, in a threadbare dress of rusty black.

“Come in!” I said.

“The letter!” answered a husky voice. She stretched out a bony hand,

without moving a step.

“It is for a lady--very important business,” said I, taking up the

letter; “are you sure that there is no mistake?”

She drew her hand under the shawl, turned without a word, and moved

towards the hall door.

“Stop!” I cried: “I beg a thousand pardons! Take it--take it! You are

the right messenger!”

She clutched it, and was instantly gone.

Several days passed, and I gradually became so nervous and uneasy that

I was on the point of inserting another “Personal” in the daily papers,

when the answer arrived. It was brief and mysterious; you shall hear

the whole of it.

“I thank you. Your letter is a sacred confidence which I pray you

never to regret. You nature is sound and good. You ask no more

than is reasonable, and I have no real right to refuse. In the one

respect which I have hinted, _I_ may have been unskillful or too

narrowly cautious: I must have the certainty of this. Therefore, as

a generous favor, give me six months more! At the end of that time

I will write to you again. Have patience with these brief lines:

another word might be a word too much.”

You notice the change in her tone? The letter gave me the strongest

impression of a new, warm, almost anxious interest on her part. My

fancies, as first at Wampsocket, began to play all sorts of singular

pranks: sometimes she was rich and of an old family, sometimes

moderately poor and obscure, but always the same calm, reposeful

face and clear gray eyes. I ceased looking for her in society, quite

sure that I should not find her, and nursed a wild expectation of

suddenly meeting her, face to face, in the most unlikely places

and under startling circumstances. However, the end of it all was

patience,--patience for six months.

There’s not much more to tell; but this last letter is hard for me to

read. It came punctually, to a day. I knew it would, and at the last I

began to dread the time, as if a heavy note were falling due, and I had

no funds to meet it. My head was in a whirl when I broke the seal. The

fact in it stared at me blankly, at once, but it was a long time before

the words and sentences became intelligible.

“The stipulated time has come, and our hidden romance is at an end.

Had I taken this resolution a year ago, it would have saved me many

vain hopes, and you, perhaps, a little uncertainty. Forgive me,

first, if you can, and then hear the explanation!

“You wished for a personal interview: _you have had, not one, but

many_. We have met, in society, talked face to face, discussed

the weather, the opera, toilettes, Queechy, Aurora Floyd, Long

Branch and Newport, and exchanged a weary amount of fashionable

gossip; and you never guessed that I was governed by any deeper

interest! I have purposely uttered ridiculous platitudes, and

you were as smilingly courteous as if you enjoyed them: I have

let fall remarks whose hollowness and selfishness could not have

escaped you, and have waited in vain for a word of sharp, honest,

manly reproof. Your manner to me was unexceptionable, as it was to

all other women: but there lies the source of my disappointment,

of--yes,--of my sorrow!

“You appreciate, I cannot doubt, the qualities in woman which men

value in one another,--culture, independence of thought, a high and

earnest apprehension of life; but you know not how to seek them.

It is not true that a mature and unperverted woman is flattered by

receiving only the general obsequiousness which most men give to

the whole sex. In the man who contradicts and strives with her, she

discovers a truer interest, a nobler respect. The empty-headed,

spindle-shanked youths who dance admirably, understand something of

billiards, much less of horses, and still less of navigation, soon

grow inexpressibly wearisome to us; but the men who adopt their

social courtesy, never seeking to arouse, uplift, instruct us, are

a bitter disappointment.

“What would have been the end, had you really found me? Certainly

a sincere, satisfying friendship. No mysterious magnetic force has

drawn you to me or held you near me, nor has my experiment inspired

me with an interest which cannot be given up without a personal

pang. I am grieved, for the sake of all men and all women. Yet,

understand me! I mean no slightest reproach. I esteem and honor you

for what you are. Farewell!”

There! Nothing could be kinder in tone, nothing more humiliating in

substance. I was sore and offended for a few days; but I soon began to

see, and ever more and more clearly, that she was wholly right. I was

sure, also, that any further attempt to correspond with her would be

vain. It all comes of taking society just as we find it, and supposing

that conventional courtesy is the only safe ground on which men and

women can meet.

The fact is--there’s no use in hiding it from myself (and I see, by

your face, that the letter cuts into your own conscience)--she is a

free, courageous, independent character, and--I am not.

But who _was_ she?

HENRY CUYLER BUNNER

1855–1896

From early manhood until his death H. C. Bunner was the editor of

“Puck.” Those who appreciated the flavor of _Airs from Arcady_ and

_Rowen_, and who knew of “Puck” only that it was our most popular comic

weekly, felt here an incongruity. If they had followed the editorial

page, they would have found dignity no less than pungency, and might

have comprehended the man as more than a maker of delicate verses and

more than a humorist. In the ordinary sense he was hardly a humorist.

Humor was large in him, but all suffused with fancy. Loving New York

as Charles Lamb loved London, he was even more like Lamb in that his

quip habitually carried a sentiment springing from human sympathy.

This ultimate quality reconciled the others of a singularly original

composition.

His fiction shows all these traits, and also a nice sense of form. He

was a student of Boccaccio; he experimented with various adaptations,

as in _The Third Figure of the Cotillion_ with the method of Irving;

and, though his preference was for freer and more spontaneous

structure, he was keenly aware, as in the story below, of the value of

the unities.

THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH

[_From “Short Sixes,” copyright, 1890, by Keppler and Schwarzmann;

reprinted here by their special permission_]

When the little seamstress had climbed to her room in the story over

the top story of the great brick tenement house in which she lived, she

was quite tired out. If you do not understand what a story over a top

story is, you must remember that there are no limits to human greed,

and hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man who owned

that seven-story tenement found that he could rent another floor, he

found no difficulty in persuading the guardians of our building laws to

let him clap another story on the roof, like a cabin on the deck of a

ship; and in the southeasterly of the four apartments on this floor the

little seamstress lived. You could just see the top of her window from

the street--the huge cornice that had capped the original front, and

that served as her window-sill now, quite hid all the lower part of the

story on top of the top-story.

The little seamstress was scarcely thirty years old, but she was

such an old-fashioned little body in so many of her looks and ways

that I had almost spelled her sempstress, after the fashion of our

grandmothers. She had been a comely body, too; and would have been

still, if she had not been thin and pale and anxious-eyed.

She was tired out to-night because she had been working hard all day

for a lady who lived far up in the “New Wards” beyond Harlem River,

and after the long journey home, she had to climb seven flights of

tenement-house stairs. She was too tired, both in body and in mind, to

cook the two little chops she had brought home. She would save them

for breakfast, she thought. So she made herself a cup of tea on the

miniature stove, and ate a slice of dry bread with it. It was too much

trouble to make toast.

But after dinner she watered her flowers. She was never too tired

for that: and the six pots of geraniums that caught the south sun

on the top of the cornice did their best to repay her. Then she sat

down in her rocking-chair by the window and looked out. Her eyry was

high above all the other buildings, and she could look across some

low roofs opposite, and see the further end of Tompkins Square, with

its sparse Spring green showing faintly through the dusk. The eternal

roar of the city floated up to her and vaguely troubled her. She was

a country girl, and although she had lived for ten years in New York,

she had never grown used to that ceaseless murmur. To-night she felt

the languor of the new season as well as the heaviness of physical

exhaustion. She was almost too tired to go to bed.

She thought of the hard day done and the hard day to be begun after the

night spent on the hard little bed. She thought of the peaceful days in

the country, when she taught school in the Massachusetts village where

she was born. She thought of a hundred small slights that she had to

bear from people better fed than bred. She thought of the sweet green

fields that she rarely saw nowadays. She thought of the long journey

forth and back that must begin and end her morrow’s work, and she

wondered if her employer would think to offer to pay her fare. Then she

pulled herself together. She must think of more agreeable things, or

she could not sleep. And as the only agreeable things she had to think

about were her flowers, she looked at the garden on top of the cornice.

A peculiar gritting noise made her look down, and she saw a cylindrical

object that glittered in the twilight, advancing in an irregular and

uncertain manner toward her flower-pots. Looking closer, she saw that

it was a pewter beer-mug, which somebody in the next apartment was

pushing with a two-foot rule. On top of the beer-mug was a piece of

paper, and on this paper was written, in a sprawling, half-formed hand:

_porter

pleas excuse the libberty And

drink it_

The seamstress started up in terror, and shut the window. She

remembered that there was a man in the next apartment. She had seen

him on the stairs, on Sundays. He seemed a grave, decent person;

but--he must be drunk. She sat down on her bed, all a-tremble. Then she

reasoned with herself. The man was drunk, that was all. He probably

would not annoy her further. And if he did, she had only to retreat

to Mrs. Mulvaney’s apartment in the rear, and Mr. Mulvaney, who was a

highly respectable man and worked in a boiler-shop, would protect her.

So, being a poor woman who had already had occasion to excuse--and

refuse--two or three “libberties” of like sort, she made up her mind to

go to bed like a reasonable seamstress, and she did. She was rewarded,

for when her light was out, she could see in the moonlight that the

two-foot rule appeared again, with one joint bent back, hitched itself

into the mug-handle, and withdrew the mug.

The next day was a hard one for the little seamstress, and she hardly

thought of the affair of the night before until the same hour had come

around again, and she sat once more by her window. Then she smiled at

the remembrance. “Poor fellow,” she said in her charitable heart, “I’ve

no doubt he’s _awfully_ ashamed of it now. Perhaps he was never tipsy

before. Perhaps he didn’t know there was a lone woman in here to be

frightened.”

Just then she heard a gritting sound. She looked down. The pewter pot

was in front of her, and the two-foot rule was slowly retiring. On the

pot was a piece of paper, and on the paper was:

_porter

good for the helth

it makes meet_

This time the little seamstress shut her window with a bang of

indignation. The color rose to her pale cheeks. She thought that she

would go down to see the janitor at once. Then she remembered the seven

flights of stairs; and she resolved to see the janitor in the morning.

Then she went to bed and saw the mug drawn back just as it had been

drawn back the night before.

The morning came, but, somehow, the seamstress did not care to complain

to the janitor. She hated to make trouble--and the janitor might

think--and--and--well, if the wretch did it again she would speak to

him herself, and that would settle it.

And so, on the next night, which was a Thursday, the little seamstress

sat down by her window, resolved to settle the matter. And she had not

sat there long, rocking in the creaking little rocking-chair which she

had brought with her from her old home, when the pewter pot hove in

sight, with a piece of paper on the top.

This time the legend read:

_Perhaps you are afrade i will

adress you

i am not that kind_

The seamstress did not quite know whether to laugh or to cry. But she

felt that the time had come for speech. She leaned out of her window

and addressed the twilight heaven.

“Mr.--Mr.--sir--I--will you _please_ put your head out of the window so

that I can speak to you?”

The silence of the other room was undisturbed. The seamstress drew

back, blushing. But before she could nerve herself for another attack,

a piece of paper appeared on the end of the two-foot rule.

_when i Say a thing i

mene it

i have Sed i would not

Adress you and i

Will not_

What was the little seamstress to do? She stood by the window and

thought hard about it. Should she complain to the janitor? But the

creature was perfectly respectful. No doubt he meant to be kind.

He certainly was kind, to waste these pots of porter on her. She

remembered the last time--and the first--that she had drunk porter.

It was at home, when she was a young girl, after she had had the

diphtheria. She remembered how good it was, and how it had given her

back her strength. And without one thought of what she was doing, she

lifted the pot of porter and took one little reminiscent sip--two

little reminiscent sips--and became aware of her utter fall and defeat.

She blushed now as she had never blushed before, put the pot down,

closed the window, and fled to her bed like a deer to the woods.

And when the porter arrived the next night, bearing the simple appeal:

_Dont be afrade of it

drink it all_

the little seamstress arose and grasped the pot firmly by the handle,

and poured its contents over the earth around her largest geranium. She

poured the contents out to the last drop, and then she dropped the pot,

and ran back and sat on her bed and cried, with her face hid in her

hands.

“Now,” she said to herself, “you’ve done it! And you’re just as nasty

and hard-hearted and suspicious and mean as--as pusley!”

And she wept to think of her hardness of heart. “He will never give me

a chance to say I am sorry,” she thought. And, really, she might have

spoken kindly to the poor man, and told him that she was much obliged

to him, but that he really mustn’t ask her to drink porter with him.

“But it’s all over and done now,” she said to herself as she sat at her

window on Saturday night. And then she looked at the cornice, and saw

the faithful little pewter pot travelling slowly toward her.

She was conquered. This act of Christian forbearance was too much for

her kindly spirit. She read the inscription on the paper:

_porter is good for Flours

but better for Fokes_

and she lifted the pot to her lips, which were not half so red as her

cheeks, and took a good, hearty, grateful draught.

She sipped in thoughtful silence after this first plunge, and presently

she was surprised to find the bottom of the pot in full view.

On the table at her side a few pearl buttons were screwed up in a bit

of white paper. She untwisted the paper and smoothed it out, and wrote

in a tremulous hand--she _could_ write a very neat hand--

_Thanks._

This she laid on the top of the pot, and in a moment the bent two-foot

rule appeared and drew the mail-carriage home. Then she sat still,

enjoying the warm glow of the porter, which seemed to have permeated

her entire being with a heat that was not at all like the unpleasant

and oppressive heat of the atmosphere, an atmosphere heavy with the

Spring damp. A gritting on the tin aroused her. A piece of paper lay

under her eyes.

_fine groing weather

Smith_

it said.

Now it is unlikely that in the whole round and range of conversational

commonplaces there was one other greeting that could have induced

the seamstress to continue the exchange of communications. But this

simple and homely phrase touched her country heart. What did “_groing

weather_” matter to the toilers in this waste of brick and mortar? This

stranger must be, like herself, a country-bred soul, longing for the

new green and the upturned brown mould of the country fields. She took

up the paper, and wrote under the first message:

_Fine_

But that seemed curt; _for_ she added: “_for_” what? She did not know.

At last in desperation she put down _potatos_. The piece of paper was

withdrawn and came back with an addition:

_Too mist for potatos._

And when the little seamstress had read this, and grasped the fact

that _m-i-s-t_ represented the writer’s pronunciation of “moist,”

she laughed softly to herself. A man whose mind, at such a time, was

seriously bent upon potatos, was not a man to be feared. She found a

half-sheet of notepaper, and wrote:

_I lived in a small village before I came to New York, but I am

afraid I do not know much about farming. Are you a farmer?_

The answer came:

_have ben most Every thing

farmed a Spel in Maine

Smith_

As she read this, the seamstress heard a church clock strike nine.

“Bless me, is it so late?” she cried, and she hurriedly penciled _Good

Night_, thrust the paper out, and closed the window. But a few minutes

later, passing by, she saw yet another bit of paper on the cornice,

fluttering in the evening breeze. It said only _good nite_, and after

a moment’s hesitation, the little seamstress took it in and gave it

shelter.

* * * * *

After this, they were the best of friends. Every evening the pot

appeared, and while the seamstress drank from it at her window, Mr.

Smith drank from its twin at his; and notes were exchanged as rapidly

as Mr. Smith’s early education permitted. They told each other their

histories, and Mr. Smith’s was one of travel and variety, which he

seemed to consider quite a matter of course. He had followed the

sea, he had farmed, he had been a logger and a hunter in the Maine

woods. Now he was foreman of an East River lumber yard, and he was

prospering. In a year or two he would have enough laid by to go home

to Bucksport and buy a share in a ship-building business. All this

dribbled out in the course of a jerky but variegated correspondence,

in which autobiographic details were mixed with reflections, moral and

philosophical.

A few samples will give an idea of Mr. Smith’s style:

_i was one trip to van demens

land_

To which the seamstress replied:

_It must have been very interesting._

But Mr. Smith disposed of this subject very briefly:

_it wornt_

Further he vouchsafed:

_i seen a Chinese cook in

hong kong could cook flap jacks

like your Mother_

_a mishnery that sells Rum

is the menest of Gods crechers_

_a bulfite is not what it is

cract up to Be_

_the dagos are wussen the

brutes_

_i am 6 1¾

but my Father was 6 foot 4_

The seamstress had taught school one Winter, and she could not refrain

from making an attempt to reform Mr. Smith’s orthography. One evening,

in answer to this communication:

_i killd a Bare in Maine 600

lbs waight_

she wrote:

_Isn’t it generally spelled Bear?_

but she gave up the attempt when he responded:

_a bare is a mene animle any

way you spel him_

The Spring wore on, and the Summer came, and still the evening drink

and the evening correspondence brightened the close of each day for

the little seamstress. And the draught of porter put her to sleep each

night, giving her a calmer rest than she had ever known during her stay

in the noisy city; and it began, moreover, to make a little “_meet_”

for her. And then the thought that she was going to have an hour of

pleasant companionship somehow gave her courage to cook and eat her

little dinner, however tired she was. The seamstress’s cheeks began to

blossom with the June roses.

And all this time Mr. Smith kept his vow of silence unbroken, though

the seamstress sometimes tempted him with little ejaculations and

exclamations to which he might have responded. He was silent and

invisible. Only the smoke of his pipe, and the clink of his mug as he

set it down on the cornice, told her that a living, material Smith was

her correspondent. They never met on the stairs, for their hours of

coming and going did not coincide. Once or twice they passed each other

in the street--but Mr. Smith looked straight ahead of him, about a foot

over her head. The little seamstress thought he was a very fine-looking

man, with his six feet one and three-quarters and his thick brown

beard. Most people would have called him plain.

Once she spoke to him. She was coming home one Summer evening, and a

gang of corner-loafers stopped her and demanded money to buy beer,

as is their custom. Before she had time to be frightened, Mr. Smith

appeared--whence, she knew not--scattered the gang like chaff, and,

collaring two of the human hyenas, kicked them, with deliberate,

ponderous, alternate kicks, until they writhed in ineffable agony.

When he let them crawl away, she turned to him and thanked him warmly,

looking very pretty now, with the color in her cheeks. But Mr. Smith

answered no word. He stared over her head, grew red in the face,

fidgeted nervously, but held his peace until his eyes fell on a rotund

Teuton, passing by.

“Say, Dutchy!” he roared.

The German stood aghast.

“I ain’t got nothing to write with!” thundered Mr. Smith, looking him

in the eye. And then the man of his word passed on his way.

And so the Summer went on, and the two correspondents chatted silently

from window to window, hid from sight of all the world below by the

friendly cornice. And they looked out over the roof, and saw the green

of Tompkins Square grow darker and dustier as the months went on.

Mr. Smith was given to Sunday trips into the suburbs, and he never came

back without a bunch of daisies or black-eyed Susans or, later, asters

or golden-rod for the little seamstress. Sometimes, with a sagacity

rare in his sex, he brought her a whole plant, with fresh loam for

potting.

He gave her also a reel in a bottle, which, he wrote, he had “_maid_”

himself, and some coral, and a dried flying-fish, that was somewhat

fearful to look upon, with its sword-like fins and its hollow eyes. At

first, she could not go to sleep with that flying-fish hanging on the

wall.

But he surprised the little seamstress very much one cool September

evening, when he shoved this letter along the cornice:

_Respected and Honored Madam_:

_Having long and vainly sought an opportunity to convey to you the

expression of my sentiments I now avail myself of the privilege

of epistolary communication to acquaint you with the fact that

the Emotions, which you have raised in my breast, are those which

should point to Connubial Love and Affection rather than to simple

Friendship. In short, Madam, I have the Honor to approach you with

a Proposal, the acceptance of which will fill me with ecstatic

Gratitude, and enable me to extend to you those Protecting Cares,

which the Matrimonial Bond makes at once the Duty and the Privilege

of him, who would, at no distant date, lead to the Hymeneal Altar

one whose charms and virtues should suffice to kindle its Flames,

without extraneous Aid_

_I remain, Dear Madam,

Your Humble Servant and

Ardent Adorer, I. Smith_

The little seamstress gazed at this letter a long time. Perhaps she was

wondering in what Ready Letter-Writer of the last century Mr. Smith

had found his form. Perhaps she was amazed at the results of his first

attempt at punctuation. Perhaps she was thinking of something else, for

there were tears in her eyes and a smile on her small mouth.

But it must have been a long time, and Mr. Smith must have grown

nervous, for presently another communication came along the line where

the top of the cornice was worn smooth. It read:

_If not understood will you

mary me_

The little seamstress seized a piece of paper and wrote:

_If I say Yes, will you speak to me?_

Then she rose and passed it out to him, leaning out of the window, and

their faces met.

HAROLD FREDERIC

1856–1898

Harold Frederic was bred and schooled, at college and at journalism,

in Central New York. His fictions were almost all written in London

during the later years of his correspondence with the “New York Times.”

The most popular of these, _The Damnation of Theron Ware_, shows him

stronger in the novel. His own fondness for his short stories is due in

part, doubtless, to their being closer to his native soil; but the one

reprinted below shows also a distinct appreciation of the form.

THE EVE OF THE FOURTH

[_From “In the Sixties,” copyright, 1893, 1894, 1897, by Charles

Scribner’s Sons, authorized publishers of Harold Frederic’s works;

reprinted here by special arrangement with them_]

It was well on toward evening before this Third of July all at once

made itself gloriously different from other days in my mind.

There was a very long afternoon, I remember, hot and overcast, with

continual threats of rain, which never came to anything. The other

boys were too excited about the morrow to care for present play. They

sat instead along the edge of the broad platform-stoop in front of

Delos Ingersoll’s grocery-store, their brown feet swinging at varying

heights above the sidewalk, and bragged about the manner in which they

contemplated celebrating the anniversary of their Independence. Most of

the elder lads were very independent indeed; they were already secure

in the parental permission to stay up all night, so that the Fourth

might be ushered in with its full quota of ceremonial. The smaller

urchins pretended that they also had this permission, or were sure

of getting it. Little Denny Cregan attracted admiring attention by

vowing that he should remain out, even if his father chased him with a

policeman all around the ward, and he had to go and live in a cave in

the gulf until he was grown up.

My inferiority to these companions of mine depressed me. They were

allowed to go without shoes and stockings; they wore loose and

comfortable old clothes, and were under no responsibility to keep them

dry or clean or whole; they had their pockets literally bulging now

with all sorts of portentous engines of noise and racket--huge brown

“double-enders,” bound with waxed cord; long, slim, vicious-looking

“nigger-chasers;” big “Union torpedoes,” covered with clay, which made

a report like a horse-pistol, and were invaluable for frightening

farmers’ horses; and so on through an extended catalogue of recondite

and sinister explosives upon which I looked with awe, as their owners

from time to time exhibited them with the proud simplicity of those

accustomed to greatness. Several of these boys also possessed toy

cannons, which would be brought forth at twilight. They spoke firmly of

ramming them to the muzzle with grass, to produce a greater noise--even

if it burst them and killed everybody.

By comparison, my lot was one of abasement. I was a solitary child, and

a victim to conventions. A blue necktie was daily pinned under my Byron

collar, and there were gilt buttons on my zouave jacket. When we were

away in the pasture playground near the gulf, and I ventured to take

off my foot-gear, every dry old thistle-point in the whole territory

seemed to arrange itself to be stepped upon by my whitened and tender

soles. I could not swim; so, while my lithe, bold comrades dived out of

sight under the deep water, and darted about chasing one another far

beyond their depth, I paddled ignobly around the “baby-hole” close to

the bank, in the warm and muddy shallows.

Especially apparent was my state of humiliation on this July afternoon.

I had no “double-enders,” nor might hope for any. The mere thought of

a private cannon seemed monstrous and unnatural to me. By some unknown

process of reasoning my mother had years before reached the theory that

a good boy ought to have two ten-cent packs of small fire-crackers on

the Fourth of July. Four or five succeeding anniversaries had hardened

this theory into an orthodox tenet of faith, with all its observances

rigidly fixed. The fire-crackers were bought for me overnight, and

placed on the hall table. Beside them lay a long rod of punk. When I

hastened down and out in the morning, with these ceremonial implements

in my hands, the hired girl would give me, in an old kettle, some

embers from the wood-fire in the summer kitchen. Thus furnished, I

went into the front yard, and in solemn solitude fired off these

crackers one by one. Those which, by reason of having lost their

tails, were only fit for “fizzes,” I saved till after breakfast. With

the exhaustion of these, I fell reluctantly back upon the public for

entertainment. I could see the soldiers, hear the band and the oration,

and in the evening, if it didn’t rain, enjoy the fireworks; but my

own contribution to the patriotic noise was always over before the

breakfast dishes had been washed.

My mother scorned the little paper torpedoes as flippant and wasteful

things. You merely threw one of them, and it went off, she said,

and there you were. I don’t know that I ever grasped this objection

in its entirety, but it impressed my whole childhood with its

unanswerableness. Years and years afterward, when my own children asked

for torpedoes, I found myself unconsciously advising against them on

quite the maternal lines. Nor was it easy to budge the good lady from

her position on the great two-packs issue. I seem to recall having

successfully undermined it once or twice, but two was the rule. When

I called her attention to the fact that our neighbor, Tom Hemingway,

thought nothing of exploding a whole pack at a time inside their

wash-boiler, she was not dazzled, but only replied: “Wilful waste makes

woful want.”

Of course the idea of the Hemingways ever knowing what want meant

was absurd. They lived a dozen doors or so from us, in a big white

house with stately white columns rising from veranda to gable across

the whole front, and a large garden, flowers and shrubs in front,

fruit-trees and vegetables behind. Squire Hemingway was the most

important man in our part of the town. I know now that he was never

anything more than United States Commissioner of Deeds, but in those

days, when he walked down the street with his gold-headed cane,

his blanket-shawl folded over his arm, and his severe, dignified,

close-shaven face held well up in the air, I seemed to behold a

companion of Presidents.

This great man had two sons. The elder of them, De Witt Hemingway, was

a man grown, and was at the front. I had seen him march away, over a

year before, with a bright drawn sword, at the side of his company. The

other son, Tom, was my senior by only a twelvemonth. He was by nature

proud, but often consented to consort with me when the selection of

other available associates was at low ebb.

It was to this Tom that I listened with most envious eagerness, in

front of the grocery-store, on the afternoon of which I speak. He did

not sit on the stoop with the others--no one expected quite that degree

of condescension--but leaned nonchalantly against a post, whittling

out a new ramrod for his cannon. He said that this year he was not

going to have any ordinary fire-crackers at all; they, he added with

a meaning glance at me, were only fit for girls. He might do a little

in “double-enders,” but his real point would be in “ringers”--an

incredible giant variety of cracker, Turkey-red like the other, but

in size almost a rolling-pin. Some of these he would fire off singly,

between volleys from his cannon. But a good many he intended to

explode, in bunches say of six, inside the tin wash-boiler, brought out

into the middle of the road for that purpose. It would doubtless blow

the old thing sky-high, but that didn’t matter. They could get a new

one.

Even as he spoke, the big bell in the tower of the town-hall burst

forth in a loud clangor of swift-repeated strokes. It was half a mile

away, but the moist air brought the urgent, clamorous sounds to our

ears as if the belfry had stood close above us. We sprang off the stoop

and stood poised, waiting to hear the number of the ward struck, and

ready to scamper off on the instant if the fire was anywhere in our

part of the town. But the excited peal went on and on, without a pause.

It became obvious that this meant something besides a fire. Perhaps

some of us wondered vaguely what that something might be, but as a body

our interest had lapsed. Billy Norris, who was the son of poor parents,

but could whip even Tom Hemingway, said he had been told that the

German boys on the other side of the gulf were coming over to “rush” us

on the following day, and that we ought all to collect nails to fire at

them from our cannon. This we pledged ourselves to do--the bell keeping

up its throbbing tumult ceaselessly.

Suddenly we saw the familiar figure of Johnson running up the street

toward us. What his first name was I never knew. To every one, little

or big, he was just Johnson. He and his family had moved into our town

after the war began; I fancy they moved away again before it ended.

I do not even know what he did for a living. But he seemed always

drunk, always turbulently good-natured, and always shouting out the

news at the top of his lungs. I cannot pretend to guess how he found

out everything as he did, or why, having found it out, he straightway

rushed homeward, scattering the intelligence as he ran. Most probably

Johnson was moulded by Nature as a town-crier, but was born by accident

some generations after the race of bellmen had disappeared. Our

neighborhood did not like him; our mothers did not know Mrs. Johnson,

and we boys behaved with snobbish roughness to his children. He seemed

not to mind this at all, but came up unwearyingly to shout out the

tidings of the day for our benefit.

“Vicksburg’s fell! Vicksburg’s fell!” was what we heard him yelling as

he approached.

Delos Ingersoll and his hired boy ran out of the grocery. Doors opened

along the street and heads were thrust inquiringly out.

“Vicksburg’s fell!” he kept hoarsely proclaiming, his arms waving in

the air, as he staggered along at a dog-trot past us, and went into the

saloon next to the grocery.

I cannot say how definite an idea these tidings conveyed to our boyish

minds. I have a notion that at the time I assumed that Vicksburg had

something to do with Gettysburg, where I knew, from the talk of my

elders, that an awful fight had been proceeding since the middle of the

week. Doubtless this confusion was aided by the fact that an hour or so

later, on that same wonderful day, the wire brought us word that this

terrible battle on Pennsylvanian soil had at last taken the form of a

Union victory. It is difficult now to see how we could have known both

these things on the Third of July--that is to say, before the people

actually concerned seemed to have been sure of them. Perhaps it was

only inspired guesswork, but I know that my town went wild over the

news, and that the clouds overhead cleared away as if by magic.

The sun did well to spread that summer sky at eventide with all the

pageantry of color the spectrum knows. It would have been preposterous

that such a day should slink off in dull, Quaker drabs. Men were

shouting in the streets now. The old cannon left over from the Mexican

war had been dragged out on to the rickety covered river-bridge, and

was frightening the fishes, and shaking the dry, worm-eaten rafters, as

fast as the swab and rammer could work. Our town bandsmen were playing

as they had never played before, down in the square in front of the

post-office. The management of the Universe could not hurl enough wild

fireworks into the exultant sunset to fit our mood.

The very air was filled with the scent of triumph--the spirit of

conquest. It seemed only natural that I should march off to my mother

and quite collectedly tell her that I desired to stay out all night

with the other boys. I had never dreamed of daring to prefer such a

request in other years. Now I was scarcely conscious of surprise when

she gave her permission, adding with a smile that I would be glad

enough to come in and go to bed before half the night was over.

I steeled my heart after supper with the proud resolve that if the

night turned out to be as protracted as one of those Lapland winter

nights we read about in the geography, I still would not surrender.

The boys outside were not so excited over the tidings of my

unlooked-for victory as I had expected them to be. They received the

news, in fact, with a rather mortifying stoicism. Tom Hemingway,

however, took enough interest in the affair to suggest that, instead

of spending my twenty cents in paltry fire-crackers, I might go down

town and buy another can of powder for his cannon. By doing so, he

pointed out, I would be a part-proprietor, as it were, of the night’s

performance, and would be entitled to occasionally touch the cannon

off. This generosity affected me, and I hastened down the long

hill-street to show myself worthy of it, repeating the instruction of

“Kentucky Bear-Hunter-coarse-grain” over and over again to myself as I

went.

Half-way on my journey I overtook a person whom, even in the gathering

twilight, I recognized as Miss Stratford, the school-teacher. She also

was walking down the hill and rapidly. It did not need the sight of a

letter in her hand to tell me that she was going to the post-office. In

those cruel war-days everybody went to the post-office. I myself went

regularly to get our mail, and to exchange shin-plasters for one-cent

stamps with which to buy yeast and other commodities that called for

minute fractional currency.

Although I was very fond of Miss Stratford--I still recall her gentle

eyes, and pretty, rounded, dark face, in its frame of long, black

curls, with tender liking--I now coldly resolved to hurry past,

pretending not to know her. It was a mean thing to do; Miss Stratford

had always been good to me, shining in that respect in brilliant

contrast to my other teachers, whom I hated bitterly. Still, the

“Kentucky Bear-Hunter-coarse-grain” was too important a matter to wait

upon any mere female friendships, and I quickened my pace into a trot,

hoping to scurry by unrecognized.

“Oh, Andrew! is that you?” I heard her call out as I ran past. For the

instant I thought of rushing on, quite as if I had not heard. Then I

stopped and walked beside her.

“I am going to stay up all night: mother says I may; and I am going to

fire off Tom Hemingway’s big cannon every fourth time, straight through

till breakfast time,” I announced to her loftily.

“Dear me! I ought to be proud to be seen walking with such an important

citizen,” she answered, with kindly playfulness. She added more

gravely, after a moment’s pause: “Then Tom is out playing with the

other boys, is he?”

“Why, of course!” I responded. “He always lets us stand around when he

fires off his cannon. He’s got some ‘ringers’ this year too.”

I heard Miss Stratford murmur an impulsive “Thank God!” under her

breath.

Full as the day had been of surprises, I could not help wondering that

the fact of Tom’s ringers should stir up such profound emotions in the

teacher’s breast. Since the subject so interested her, I went on with

a long catalogue of Tom’s other pyrotechnic possessions, and from that

to an account of his almost supernatural collection of postage-stamps.

In a few minutes more I am sure I should have revealed to her the great

secret of my life, which was my determination, in case I came to assume

the victorious rôle and rank of Napoleon, to immediately make Tom a

Marshal of the Empire.

But we had reached the post-office square. I had never before seen it

so full of people.

Even to my boyish eyes the tragic line of division which cleft this

crowd in twain was apparent. On one side, over by the Seminary, the

youngsters had lighted a bonfire, and were running about it--some of

the bolder ones jumping through it in frolicsome recklessness. Close

by stood the band, now valiantly thumping out “John Brown’s Body” upon

the noisy night air. It was quite dark by this time, but the musicians

knew the tune by heart. So did the throng about them, and sang it with

lusty fervor. The doors of the saloon toward the corner of the square

were flung wide open. Two black streams of men kept in motion under the

radiance of the big reflector-lamp over these doors--one going in, one

coming out. They slapped one another on the back as they passed, with

exultant screams and shouts. Every once in a while, when movement was

for the instant blocked, some voice lifted above the others would begin

a “Hip-hip-hip-hip--” and then would come a roar that fairly drowned

the music.

On the post-office side of the square there was no bonfire. No one

raised a cheer. A densely packed mass of men and women stood in

front of the big square stone building, with its closed doors, and

curtained windows upon which, from time to time, the shadow of some

passing clerk, bareheaded and hurried, would be momentarily thrown.

They waited in silence for the night mail to be sorted. If they spoke

to one another, it was in whispers--as if they had been standing with

uncovered heads at a funeral service in a graveyard. The dim light

reflected over from the bonfire, or down from the shaded windows of

the post-office, showed solemn, hard-lined, anxious faces. Their lips

scarcely moved when they muttered little low-toned remarks to their

neighbors. They spoke from the side of the mouth, and only on one

subject.

“He went all through Fredericksburg without a scratch--”

“He looks so much like me--General Palmer told my brother he’d have

known his hide in a tan-yard--”

“He’s been gone--let’s see--it was a year some time last April--”

“He was counting on a furlough the first of this month. I suppose

nobody got one as things turned out--”

“He said, ‘No; it ain’t my style. I’ll fight as much as you like, but I

won’t be nigger-waiter for no man, captain or no captain’--”

Thus I heard the scattered murmurs among the grown-up heads above me,

as we pushed into the outskirts of the throng, and stood there, waiting

for the rest. There was no sentence without a “he” in it. A stranger

might have fancied that they were all talking of one man. I knew

better. They were the fathers and mothers, the sisters, brothers, wives

of the men whose regiments had been in that horrible three days’ fight

at Gettysburg. Each was thinking and speaking of his own, and took it

for granted the others would understand. For that matter, they all

did understand. The town knew the name and family of every one of the

twelve-score sons she had in this battle.

It is not very clear to me now why people all went to the post-office

to wait for the evening papers that came in from the nearest big city.

Nowadays they would be brought in bulk and sold on the street before

the mail-bags had reached the post-office. Apparently that had not yet

been thought of in our slow old town.

The band across the square had started up afresh with “Annie

Lisle”--the sweet old refrain of “Wave willows, murmur waters,” comes

back to me now after a quarter-century of forgetfulness--when all at

once there was a sharp forward movement of the crowd. The doors had

been thrown open, and the hallway was on the instant filled with a

swarming multitude. The band had stopped as suddenly as it began, and

no more cheering was heard. We could see whole troops of dark forms

scudding toward us from the other side of the square.

“Run in for me--that’s a good boy--ask for Dr. Stratford’s mail,” the

teacher whispered, bending over me.

It seemed an age before I finally got back to her, with the paper in

its postmarked wrapper buttoned up inside my jacket. I had never been

in so fierce and determined a crowd before, and I emerged from it at

last, confused in wits and panting for breath. I was still looking

about through the gloom in a foolish way for Miss Stratford, when I

felt her hand laid sharply on my shoulder.

“Well--where is it?--did nothing come?” she asked, her voice trembling

with eagerness, and the eyes which I had thought so soft and dove-like

flashing down upon me as if she were Miss Pritchard, and I had been

caught chewing gum in school.

I drew the paper out from under my roundabout, and gave it to her. She

grasped it, and thrust a finger under the cover to tear it off. Then

she hesitated for a moment, and looked about her. “Come where there is

some light,” she said, and started up the street. Although she seemed

to have spoken more to herself than to me, I followed her in silence,

close to her side.

For a long way the sidewalk in front of every lighted store-window was

thronged with a group of people clustered tight about some one who had

a paper, and was reading from it aloud. Beside broken snatches of this

monologue, we caught, now groans of sorrow and horror, now exclamations

of proud approval, and even the beginnings of cheers, broken in upon by

a general “’Sh-h!” as we hurried past outside the curb.

It was under a lamp in the little park nearly half-way up the hill that

Miss Stratford stopped, and spread the paper open. I see her still,

white-faced, under the flickering gaslight, her black curls making

a strange dark bar between the pale-straw hat and the white of her

shoulder shawl and muslin dress, her hands trembling as they held up

the extended sheet. She scanned the columns swiftly, skimmingly for a

time, as I could see by the way she moved her round chin up and down.

Then she came to a part which called for closer reading. The paper

shook perceptibly now, as she bent her eyes upon it. Then all at once

it fell from her hands, and without a sound she walked away.

I picked the paper up and followed her along the gravelled path. It was

like pursuing a ghost, so weirdly white did her summer attire now look

to my frightened eyes, with such a swift and deathly silence did she

move. The path upon which we were described a circle touching the four

sides of the square. She did not quit it when the intersection with

our street was reached, but followed straight round again toward the

point where we had entered the park. This, too, in turn, she passed,

gliding noiselessly forward under the black arches of the overhanging

elms. The suggestion that she did not know she was going round and

round in a ring startled my brain. I would have run up to her now if I

had dared.

Suddenly she turned, and saw that I was behind her. She sank slowly

into one of the garden-seats, by the path, and held out for a moment

a hesitating hand toward me. I went up at this and looked into her

face. Shadowed as it was, the change I saw there chilled my blood. It

was like the face of some one I had never seen before, with fixed,

wide-open, staring eyes which seemed to look beyond me through the

darkness, upon some terrible sight no other could see.

“Go--run and tell--Tom--to go home! His brother--his brother has

been killed,” she said to me, choking over the words as if they hurt

her throat, and still with the same strange dry-eyed, far-away gaze

covering yet not seeing me.

I held out the paper for her to take, but she made no sign, and I

gingerly laid it on the seat beside her. I hung about for a minute or

two longer, imagining that she might have something else to say--but no

word came. Then, with a feebly inopportune “Well, good-by,” I started

off alone up the hill.

It was a distinct relief to find that my companions were congregated at

the lower end of the common, instead of their accustomed haunt farther

up near my home, for the walk had been a lonely one, and I was deeply

depressed by what had happened. Tom, it seems, had been called away

some quarter of an hour before. All the boys knew of the calamity which

had befallen the Hemingways. We talked about it, from time to time, as

we loaded and fired the cannon which Tom had obligingly turned over

to my friends. It had been out of deference to the feelings of the

stricken household that they had betaken themselves and their racket

off to the remote corner of the common. The solemnity of the occasion

silenced criticism upon my conduct in forgetting to buy the powder.

“There would be enough as long as it lasted,” Billy Norris said, with

philosophic decision.

We speculated upon the likelihood of De Witt Hemingway’s being given a

military funeral. These mournful pageants had by this time become such

familiar things to us that the prospect of one more had no element of

excitement in it, save as it involved a gloomy sort of distinction for

Tom. He would ride in the first mourning-carriage with his parents,

and this would associate us, as we walked along ahead of the band,

with the most intimate aspects of the demonstration. We regretted now

that the soldier company which we had so long projected remained still

unorganized. Had it been otherwise we would probably have been awarded

the right of the line in the procession. Some one suggested that it was

not too late--and we promptly bound ourselves to meet after breakfast

next day to organize and begin drilling. If we worked at this night

and day, and our parents instantaneously provided us with uniforms and

guns, we should be in time. It was also arranged that we should be

called the De Witt C. Hemingway Fire Zouaves, and that Billy Norris

should be side captain. The chief command would, of course, be reserved

for Tom. We would specially salute him as he rode past in the closed

carriage, and then fall in behind, forming his honorary escort.

None of us had known the dead officer closely, owing to his advanced

age. He was seven or eight years older than even Tom. But the more

elderly among our group had seen him play base-ball in the academy

nine, and our neighborhood was still alive with legends of his early

audacity and skill in collecting barrels and dry-goods boxes at night

for election bonfires. It was remembered that once he carried away a

whole front-stoop from the house of a little German tailor on one of

the back streets. As we stood around the heated cannon, in the great

black solitude of the common, our fancies pictured this redoubtable

young man once more among us--not in his blue uniform, with crimson

sash and sword laid by his side, and the gauntlets drawn over his

lifeless hands, but as a taller and glorified Tom, in a roundabout

jacket and copper-toed boots, giving the law on this his playground.

The very cannon at our feet had once been his. The night air became

peopled with ghosts of his contemporaries--handsome boys who had grown

up before us, and had gone away to lay down their lives in far-off

Virginia or Tennessee.

These heroic shades brought drowsiness in their train. We lapsed into

long silences, punctuated by yawns, when it was not our turn to ram and

touch off the cannon. Finally some of us stretched ourselves out on the

grass, in the warm darkness, to wait comfortably for this turn to come.

What did come instead was daybreak--finding Billy Norris and myself

alone constant to our all-night vow. We sat up and shivered as we

rubbed our eyes. The morning air had a chilling freshness that went

to my bones--and these, moreover, were filled with those novel aches

and stiffnesses which beds were invented to prevent. We stood up,

stretching out our arms, and gaping at the pearl-and-rose beginnings of

the sunrise in the eastern sky. The other boys had all gone home, and

taken the cannon with them. Only scraps of torn paper and tiny patches

of burnt grass marked the site of our celebration.

My first weak impulse was to march home without delay, and get into bed

as quickly as might be. But Billy Norris looked so finely resolute and

resourceful that I hesitated to suggest this, and said nothing, leaving

the initiative to him. One could see, by the most casual glance, that

he was superior to mere considerations of unseasonableness in hours.

I remembered now that he was one of that remarkable body of boys,

the paper-carriers, who rose when all others were asleep in their

warm nests, and trudged about long before breakfast distributing the

_Clarion_ among the well-to-do households. This fact had given him his

position in our neighborhood as quite the next in leadership to Tom

Hemingway.

He presently outlined his plans to me, after having tried the centre

of light on the horizon, where soon the sun would be, by an old brass

compass he had in his pocket--a process which enabled him, he said, to

tell pretty well what time it was. The paper wouldn’t be out for nearly

two hours yet--and if it were not for the fact of a great battle, there

would have been no paper at all on this glorious anniversary--but he

thought we would go down-town and see what was going on around about

the newspaper office. Forthwith we started. He cheered my faint spirits

by assuring me that I would soon cease to be sleepy, and would, in

fact, feel better than usual. I dragged my feet along at his side,

waiting for this revival to come, and meantime furtively yawning

against my sleeve.

Billy seemed to have dreamed a good deal, during our nap on the common,

about the De Witt C. Hemingway Fire Zouaves. At least he had now in

his head a marvellously elaborated system of organization, which he

unfolded as we went along. I felt that I had never before realized his

greatness, his born genius for command. His scheme halted nowhere. He

allotted offices with discriminating firmness; he treated the question

of uniforms and guns as a trivial detail which would settle itself;

he spoke with calm confidence of our offering our services to the

Republic in the autumn; his clear vision saw even the materials for a

fife-and-drum corps among the German boys in the back streets. It was

true that I appeared personally to play a meagre part in these great

projects; the most that was said about me was that I might make a fair

third-corporal. But Fate had thrown in my way such a wonderful chance

of becoming intimate with Billy that I made sure I should swiftly

advance in rank--the more so as I discerned in the background of his

thoughts, as it were, a grim determination to make short work of Tom

Hemingway’s aristocratic pretensions, once the funeral was over.

We were forced to make a detour of the park on our way down, because

Billy observed some half-dozen Irish boys at play with a cannon inside,

whom he knew to be hostile. If there had been only four, he said, he

would have gone in and routed them. He could whip any two of them, he

added, with one hand tied behind his back. I listened with admiration.

Billy was not tall, but he possessed great thickness of chest and

length of arm. His skin was so dark that we canvassed the theory from

time to time of his having Indian blood. He did not discourage this,

and he admitted himself that he was double-jointed.

The streets of the business part of the town, into which we now made

our way, were quite deserted. We went around into the yard behind the

printing-office, where the carrier-boys were wont to wait for the press

to get to work; and Billy displayed some impatience at discovering that

here too there was no one. It was now broad daylight, but through the

windows of the composing-room we could see some of the printers still

setting type by kerosene lamps.

We seated ourselves at the end of the yard on a big, flat, smooth-faced

stone, and Billy produced from his pocket a number of “em” quads, so

he called them, with which the carriers had learned from the printers’

boys to play a very beautiful game. You shook the pieces of metal in

your hands and threw them on the stone; your score depended upon the

number of nicked sides that were turned uppermost. We played this game

in the interest of good-fellowship for a little. Then Billy told me

that the carriers always played it for pennies, and that it was unmanly

for us to do otherwise. He had no pennies at that precise moment, but

would pay at the end of the week what he had lost; in the meantime

there was my twenty cents to go on with. After this Billy threw so many

nicks uppermost that my courage gave way, and I made an attempt to stop

the game; but a single remark from him as to the military destiny

which he was reserving for me, if I only displayed true soldierly nerve

and grit, sufficed to quiet me once more, and the play went on. I had

now only five cents left.

Suddenly a shadow interposed itself between the sunlight and the stone.

I looked up, to behold a small boy with bare arms and a blackened apron

standing over me, watching our game. There was a great deal of ink on

his face and hands, and a hardened, not to say rakish expression in his

eye.

“Why don’t you ‘jeff’ with somebody of your own size?” he demanded of

Billy after having looked me over critically.

He was not nearly so big as Billy, and I expected to see the latter

instantly rise and crush him, but Billy only laughed and said we were

playing for fun; he was going to give me all my money back. I was

rejoiced to hear this, but still felt surprised at the propitiatory

manner Billy adopted toward this diminutive inky boy. It was not the

demeanor befitting a side-captain--and what made it worse was that the

strange boy loftily declined to be cajoled by it. He sniffed when Billy

told him about the military company we were forming; he coldly shook

his head, with a curt “Nixie!” when invited to join it; and he laughed

aloud at hearing the name our organization was to bear.

“He ain’t dead at all--that De Witt Hemingway,” he said, with jeering

contempt.

“Hain’t he though!” exclaimed Billy. “The news come last night. Tom had

to go home--his mother sent for him--on account of it!”

“I’ll bet you a quarter he ain’t dead,” responded the practical inky

boy. “Money up, though!”

“I’ve only got fifteen cents. I’ll bet you that, though,” rejoined

Billy, producing my torn and dishevelled shin-plasters.

“All right! Wait here!” said the boy, running off to the building

and disappearing through the door. There was barely time for me to

learn from my companion that this printer’s apprentice was called

“the devil,” and could not only whistle between his teeth and crack

his fingers, but chew tobacco, when he reappeared, with a long narrow

strip of paper in his hand. This he held out for us to see, indicating

with an ebon forefinger the special paragraph we were to read. Billy

looked at it sharply, for several moments in silence. Then he said to

me: “What does it say there? I must ’a’ got some powder in my eyes last

night.”

I read this paragraph aloud, not without an unworthy feeling that the

inky boy would now respect me deeply:

“CORRECTION. Lieutenant De Witt C. Hemingway, of Company A, --th

New York, reported in earlier despatches among the killed, is

uninjured. The officer killed is Lieutenant Carl Heinninge, Company

F, same regiment.”

Billy’s face visibly lengthened as I read this out, and he felt us

both looking at him. He made a pretence of examining the slip of paper

again, but in a half-hearted way. Then he ruefully handed over the

fifteen cents and, rising from the stone, shook himself.

“Them Dutchmen never was no good!” was what he said.

The inky boy had put the money in the pocket under his apron, and

grinned now with as much enjoyment as dignity would permit him to show.

He did not seem to mind any longer the original source of his winnings,

and it was apparent that I could not with decency recall it to him.

Some odd impulse prompted me, however, to ask him if I might have the

paper he had in his hand. He was magnanimous enough to present me with

the proof-sheet on the spot. Then with another grin he turned and left

us.

Billy stood sullenly kicking with his bare toes into a sand-heap by the

stone. He would not answer me when I spoke to him. It flashed across my

perceptive faculties that he was not such a great man, after all, as

I had imagined. In another instant or two it had become quite clear to

me that I had no admiration for him whatever. Without a word I turned

on my heel and walked determinedly out of the yard and into the street,

homeward bent.

All at once I quickened my pace; something had occurred to me. The

purpose thus conceived grew so swiftly that soon I found myself

running. Up the hill I sped, and straight through the park. If the

Irish boys shouted after me I knew it not, but dashed on heedless of

all else save the one idea. I only halted, breathless and panting, when

I stood on Dr. Stratford’s doorstep, and heard the night-bell inside

jangling shrilly in response to my excited pull.

As I waited, I pictured to myself the old doctor as he would presently

come down, half-dressed and pulling on his coat as he advanced. He

would ask, eagerly, “Who is sick? Where am I to go?” and I would calmly

reply that he unduly alarmed himself, and that I had a message for his

daughter. He would, of course, ask me what it was, and I, politely but

firmly, would decline to explain to any one but the lady in person.

Just what might ensue was not clear--but I beheld myself throughout

commanding the situation, at once benevolent, polished, and inexorable.

The door opened with unlooked-for promptness, while my self-complacent

vision still hung in midair. Instead of the bald and spectacled old

doctor, there confronted me a white-faced, solemn-eyed lady in a black

dress, whom I did not seem to know. I stared at her, tongue-tied, till

she said, in a low, grave voice, “Well, Andrew, what is it?”

Then of course I saw that it was Miss Stratford, my teacher, the

person whom I had come to see. Some vague sense of what the sleepless

night had meant in this house came to me as I gazed confusedly at her

mourning, and heard the echo of her sad tones in my ears.

“Is some one ill?” she asked again.

“No; some one--some one is very well!” I managed to reply, lifting my

eyes again to her wan face. The spectacle of its drawn lines and pallor

all at once assailed my wearied and overtaxed nerves with crushing

weight. I felt myself beginning to whimper, and rushing tears scalded

my eyes. Something inside my breast seemed to be dragging me down

through the stoop.

I have now only the recollection of Miss Stratford’s kneeling by my

side, with a supporting arm around me, and of her thus unrolling and

reading the proof-paper I had in my hand. We were in the hall now,

instead of on the stoop, and there was a long silence. Then she put her

head on my shoulder and wept. I could hear and feel her sobs as if they

were my own.

“I--I didn’t think you’d cry--that you’d be so sorry,” I heard myself

saying, at last, in despondent self-defence.

Miss Stratford lifted her head and, still kneeling as she was, put a

finger under my chin to make me look her in her face. Lo! the eyes were

laughing through their tears; the whole countenance was radiant once

more with the light of happy youth and with that other glory which

youth knows only once.

“Why, Andrew, boy,” she said, trembling, smiling, sobbing, beaming all

at once, “didn’t you know that people cry for very joy sometimes?”

And as I shook my head she bent down and kissed me.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

[Since any list approaching a complete bibliography would be unduly

long, these suggestions are merely for the convenience of those

who, without special research, wish to read further and compare.

They remain after rejection of many essays that seem hardly to

advance the discussion.]

=Cairns, William B.=, _On the Development of American Literature

from 1815 to 1833_, with especial reference to periodicals;

Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Philology and

Literature Series, volume i, no. 1, pages 1–87.

=Canby, Henry Seidel=, _The Short Story_; Yale Studies in English,

xii (revised as introduction to _The Book of the Short Story_,

edited by Alexander Jessup and Henry Seidel Canby).

=Chassang, A.=, _Histoire du Roman ... dans l’Antiquité Grecque et

Latine_; Paris (2d ed.), 1862.

=Gilbert, E.=, _Le Roman en France pendant le xix^e Siècle_; Paris

(2d ed.), 1896.

=Hart, Walter Morris=, _The Evolution of the Short Story_; address

delivered before the Alumni Association of Haverford College,

June 12, 1901.

=Matthews, Brander=, _The Philosophy of the Short Story_; New

York, 1901. (This, the standard essay on the subject, is now

published separately, with notes and a few striking references.)

=Moland et d’Héricault=, _Nouvelles Françoises en Prose du

xiii^{me} Siècle_; Paris, 1856 (l’Empereur Constant, Amis

et Amile, le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane, la Comtesse de

Ponthieu, Aucassin et Nicolette; introduction, notes).

=Morris, William=, _Old French Romances done into English by

William Morris_, with introduction by Joseph Jacobs; London,

1896 (translation of the same tales as in the preceding, except

Aucassin and Nicolette).

=Peck, Harry Thurston=, _Trimalchio’s Dinner_ by Petronius Arbiter,

translated from the original Latin, with an introduction and

bibliographical appendix; New York, 1898. (The introduction

discusses prose fiction in Greece and Rome.)

=Perry, Bliss=, _A Study of Prose Fiction_; Boston, 1902.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Donald G. Mitchell, _American Lands and Letters_.

[2] _Literary Papers of William Austin_, Boston, 1890, page 43.

[3] See Prof. William B. Cairns, _On the Development of American

Literature from 1815 to 1833, with especial reference to periodicals_;

Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Philology and Literature

Series, volume i, No. 1.

[4] For a pungent characterisation of the annuals, see Prof. Henry A.

Beers’s life of N. P. Willis (American Men of Letters), pages 77 and

following.

[5] Fromentin (_Un Été dans le Sahara_, page 59; _Une Année dans le

Sahel_, pages 215 and following) lays this down for painting.

[6] Bret Harte, _The Rise of the Short Story_, Cornhill Magazine, July,

1899.

[7] See Cairns, as above, page 64. The influence of the Spectator form

in France appears strikingly in _L’Hermite de la Chaussée d’Antin_, ou

observations sur les mœurs et les usages français au commencement du

xix^{me} siècle, par M. de Jouy, Paris (collective volumes), 1813.

[8] Cross, _Development of the English Novel_, pages 24, 25.

[9] For Irving’s own view of his tales, see a quotation from his

letters at page xix of Professor Brander Matthews’s edition of the

_Tales of a Traveller_.

[10] “A rivulet of story meandering through a broad meadow of

episode--a book of episodes with occasional digressions into the plot.”

Kennedy’s preface to _Swallow Barn_.

[11] This is the character of the tales of Mme. de Genlis, of which a

volume was published in New York, 1825: _New Moral Tales, selected and

translated from the French of Mme. de Genlis, by an American_.

[12] Nodier adopts the same setting for the same purpose (cf. _Les

Quatre Talismans_, 1838); but the habit is at least as old as Voltaire.

[13] So Godfrey Wallace’s _Esmeralda_, Atlantic Souvenir for 1829.

[14] Miss Sedgwick’s _Chivalric Sailor_ (1835) is essentially like our

current historical romances. A typical instance is Dana’s _Paul Felton_

(1822).

[15] This tendency was confirmed, of course, by the predominance of

Scott.

[16] Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, page 15.

[17] _Poetics_, chapter x.

[18] Poe’s review of Hawthorne’s tales (1842) begins by remarking that

they are not all tales (Stedman and Woodberry edition of Poe, vol. vii,

page 28).

[19] Poe’s tales were translated into French, German, Italian, and

Spanish. He was reviewed in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Oct. 15, 1846

(new series, vol. xvi, page 341).

[20] See Aristotle’s _Poetics_, chapters vii and viii. The “classical”

French drama deduced from Aristotle’s general principle of unity of

action a strict system of practice. Of Poe’s adherence to this system a

good instance is _The Cask of Amontillado_.

[21] In a review of Mrs. Sigourney, Southern Literary Messenger, volume

ii, page 113 (January, 1836); quoted in Woodberry’s Life of Poe, page

94.

[22] In a review of Hawthorne, Graham’s Magazine, May, 1842; Stedman

and Woodberry’s edition of Poe, volume vii, page 30; quoted in the

appendix to Brander Matthews’s _Philosophy of the Short-Story_.

[23] A collection ascribed to Antonius Diogenes, compiled by Aristides

of Miletus, was translated into Latin by Cornelius Sisenna (119–67

B.C.). The translation is lost.

[24] The _Cena_ of Petronius has more consistency, is in form more like

the longer tales of antiquity.

[25] The object of Lucian is always satire. This, not any purely

narrative end, determines his method. But it is worth observing that

_The Ass_ is picaresque. For the rest, no single adventure of the

string is more than anecdote.

[26] The Greek title is ποιμενικά.

[27] _E. g._, the fifteenth idyl of Theocritus, and the opening of the

seventh oration of Dio Chrysostom. The latter, though brought in as

anecdote, has extraordinary ingenuity and finish of form.

[28] See the introduction by Joseph Jacobs to _Old French Romances done

into English by William Morris_.

[29] This, perhaps, is typically the _novella_; but Boccaccio

will not fix the term: “intendo di raccontare cento _novelle, o

favole o parabole o istorie, che dire le vogliamo_ ... nelle quali

_novelle_....”--_Preface to Decameron._

[30] For reference in more detailed study of mediæval forms, this

tentative classification of the _Decameron_ may be tabulated as

follows:--

_anecdote_ 55

(a) _simple anecdote_ 34

I, all but nov. 4; III, nov. 4; V, nov. 4; VI, entire;

VIII, all but nov. 7 & 8; IX, nov. 1 & 7–10.

(b) _anecdote more artistically elaborated_ 21

III, nov. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6; V, nov. 10; VII, entire;

VIII, nov. 7; IX, nov. 2–5.

_scenario or summary romance_ 40

II, nov. 3–10; III, nov. 7–10; IV, entire; V, all

but nov. 4 & 10; X, entire.

_approaching short story_ 3

I, nov. 4; II, nov. 1; VIII, nov. 8.

_short story_ 2

II, nov. 2; IX, nov. 6. ----

100

[31] E. Gilbert, _Le roman en France pendant le xix^e siècle_, page 65;

A. France, _La vie littéraire_, _I^{re} série_, page 47.

[32] Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, page 65.

[33] _Colomba_ has one hundred and fifty pages.

[34] See an essay on _The Literary Influence of Sterne in France_,

Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, volume

xvii, pages 221–236.

[35] It would be interesting, for instance, to determine whether

Mérimée learned anything in form from Poushkin.

[36] Vide the excellent discourse of G. C. Verplanck, Esq., before the

New York Historical Society.

[37] Not in the first edition.

[38] In New Hampshire.

[39] In the original publication the name is Patience.

[40] [“In place of this clause the first edition has: “Her figure,

her air, her features,--all, in their very minutest development were

those--were identically (I can use no other sufficient term) were

identically those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling of

stupor,” etc.]

[41] Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of

Llandaff. See Chemical Essays, vol. v.

[42] The season of peach-blossoms was the only season of marriage in

ancient China.

[43] The most common decorations of rooms, halls, and temples, in

China, are ornamental scrolls or labels of colored paper or wood,

painted and gilded, and hung over doors or windows, and inscribed with

a line or couplet conveying some allusion to the circumstances of the

inhabitant, or some pious or philosophical axiom. For instance, a

poetical one recorded by Dr. Morrison:--

“From the pine forest the azure dragon ascends to the milky way,”--

typical of the prosperous man arising to wealth and honors.

INDEX

[_Titles of books and periodicals are in quotation marks; titles of

separate stories, in italics_]

Addison, a model for Irving, 6

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 34

_Alice Doane’s Appeal_ (Hawthorne), 13

Allegory, 10, 14, 23, 230

_Ambitious Guest, The_ (Hawthorne), 14

American literature, brevity of, 1;

wherein American, 1–4, 8, 35;

American life in, 3–6, 11, 12

“American Monthly Magazine, The,” 113

_Amis and Amile_, 25

Anecdote, 10, 24, 26, 27, 29

Annuals, American, 2, 4, 5, 9–12, 18

Antonius Diogenes, 24

“Appleton’s Journal,” 245

Apuleius, 30

Aristides of Miletus, 24

Aristotle, “Poetics,” 13, 19, 20

_Arsène Guillot_ (Mérimée), 31

Artificiality in short story, 20, 32

“Ass, The,” of Lucian, 24

“Atlantic Monthly, The,” 247

“Atlantic Souvenir, The,” 2, 4, 5, 11

_Aucassin and Nicolette_, 25, 27, 31

Austin, William, 1, 10, 12, 59–95;

biographical and critical sketch, 59;

_Joseph Natterstrom_, 1, 10;

_Peter Rugg_, 10, 12, 60–95

Bacon, Delia, 11

Balzac, Honoré de, 32–33;

_El verdugo_, _Les proscrits_, _La messe de l’athée_, _Z. Marcas_,

32;

form in, 32–33

Bandello, 29

Beckwith, Hiram W., 97

_Bee-Tree, The_ (Kirkland), 195–210

Beers, Henry A., 2, 177

_Ben Hadar_ (Paulding), 10

_Berenice_ (Poe), 2, 3, 16, 18, 21, 22, 33

Blackwell, Robert, 97

Boccaccio, “The Decameron,” 26–28, 30

“Boston Book, The,” 61

Brunetière, Ferdinand, 26

_Buckthorne and His Friends_ (Irving), 8

Bunner, Henry Cuyler, 289–301;

biographical and critical note, 289;

_The Third Figure of the Cotillion_, 289;

_The Love Letters of Smith_, 291–301

Burton’s “Gentleman’s Magazine,” 154

Cable, George W., 5, 34;

_Posson Jone_, 34

Cairns, William B., 2, 6, 325

Canby, Henry Seidel, 325

_Carmen_ (Mérimée), 31

_Catholic, The_, 4

“Cena Trimalchionis,” of Petronius, 24

“Cent nouvelles nouvelles, Les,” 28, 30

Character, development of, 13, 26, 27

Chassang, A., 325

Chaucer, 25, 28;

_The Man of Law_, _The Pardoner_, _Troilus and Criseyde_, 25

_Chivalric Sailor, The_ (Sedgwick), 11

Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain), 4, 34;

_The Jumping Frog_, 34

Climax (_see_ Culmination)

_Colomba_ (Mérimée), 31

_Combe à l’homme mort, La_ (Nodier), 29, 30

Compression of time, in short story, 8, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, 27, 28,

33 (_see_ Unity)

“Condensed Novels” (Harte), 229

Consistency of form, 9, 23, 26–28, 31, 32, 33 (_see_ Unity)

_Conte_ and _nouvelle_, 30, 31, 33

“Contes de la Reine de Navarre” (_see_ “Heptameron”)

Cooper, James Fenimore, 1, 5

Cornelius Sisenna, 24

Culmination, in short story, 7, 8, 10, 20–22, 26–28, 31, 32, 33

_Damnation of Theron Ware, The_ (Frederic), 303

Dana, Richard Henry, _Paul Felton_, 11

_Daphne, The_ (Webster), 245

_Daphnis and Chloe_, 24–25

“Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil” (Willis), 178

Daudet, Alphonse, 30, 34

_David Swan_ (Hawthorne), 14

“Decameron, The,” 26–28

De Quincey, Thomas, 30

Descriptive sketches, 9, 12, 14, 31, 99, 113, 193

Dialogue and monologue, 19, 27

_Diamond Lens, The_ (O’Brien), 211

Dickens, Charles, influence of, on Bret Harte, 230;

on O’Brien, 211

Dio Chrysostom, 25

Directness of movement, 18, 19, 20, 26, 27

Documentary interest, in fiction, 3, 30

Dominant, use of a single detail as, 16, 21, 22

Drama, influence of, on novel and short story, 26, 34

Dumas, Alexandre, influence of, on Bret Harte, 230

Edgeworth, Maria, 26

_Emigrant’s Daughter, The_, 5

_End of the Passage, The_ (Kipling), 212

_Enlèvement de la redoute, Le_ (Mérimée), 31

_Esmeralda, The_ (Wallace), 11

Essay tendency in tales, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, 18, 32

_Ethan Brand_ (Hawthorne), 13

_Eve of the Fourth, The_ (Frederic), 305–324

Exposition in tales (_see_ Essay tendency)

_Fall of the House of Usher, The_ (Poe), 18, 154–176

_Fancy’s Show Box_ (Hawthorne), 14

_Filleule du Seigneur, La_ (Nodier), 30

Flaubert, Gustave, 30

Flint, Timothy, 5

_Florus, King, and the Fair Jehane_, 25

_Fool’s Moustache, A_ (Webster), 245

“Forest Life” (Kirkland), 193

France, Anatole, 29

Frederic, Harold, 303–324;

biographical and critical note, 303;

“In the Sixties,” 303;

_The Eve of the Fourth_, 305–324;

_The Damnation of Theron Ware_, 303

Fromentin, Eugène, 3

Frontier, tales of the, 5, 10, 12, 97–127, 193–210, 229–243

Gautier, Théophile, 30, 33;

_Le nid de rossignols_, _La mort amoureuse_, 33;

preferred _nouvelle_ to _conte_, diffuseness, influence of Sterne,

tendency to mere description, likeness to Poe, 33

Genlis, Mme. de, moral tales of, 10

“Gentleman’s Magazine and American Monthly Review,” Burton’s, 154

_German Student, The_ (Irving), 8

Gift-books (_see_ Annuals)

Gilbert, E., 29, 325

Gilman, Mrs., 5

“Golden Era, The,” 229

Goldsmith, influence on Irving, 6

Gradation, 20–23, 32 (_see_ Sequence)

_Great Good Place, The_ (James), 34

_Great Stone Face, The_ (Hawthorne), 14

Hale, Mrs., 5

Hall, James, 5, 9, 11, 12, 97–112;

biographical and critical note, 97;

“The Illinois Intelligencer,” “The Illinois Magazine,” “The Western

Monthly Magazine,” “Letters from the West,” “Sketches of the

West,” “Notes on the Western States,” “The Wilderness and the

War Path,” 97;

“The Western Souvenir,” 5, 97;

_The Indian Hater_, _Pete Featherton_, 5;

_The Village Musician_, 9;

_The French Village_, 5, 9, 12, 99–112

Harmonisation, 16, 23

“Harper’s Monthly Magazine,” 212, 213

Hart, Walter Morris, 325

Harte, Francis Bret, 4, 229–243;

biographical and critical note, 229;

“Condensed Novels,” 229;

_The Luck of Roaring Camp_, 229, 230;

_Johnson’s Old Woman_, _Mrs. Skaggs’s Husbands_, _The Iliad of

Sandy Bar_, _Tennessee’s Partner_, 230;

_The Outcasts of Poker Flat_, 231–243;

influence of Dickens, 230;

of Dumas, 230;

tendency to melodrama, 230;

local truth, 229;

symbolism, 230

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 2, 5, 9, 10, 12–15, 16, 18, 23, 30, 31, 32, 59,

129–142, 230;

bent not toward short story, 12–15, 31;

allegory, symbolism, 14, 23, 230;

vocabulary, 16;

tendency toward description, 14;

toward essay, 14, 15, 18, 30;

expository introductions, 18;

unity compared with Poe’s, 23;

likeness to Nodier, 30;

“Twice-Told Tales,” 131;

_The Gentle Boy_, 12;

_The Wives of the Dead_, 12, 13;

_Roger Malvin’s Burial_, _Alice Doane’s Appeal_, _Ethan Brand_, 13;

_The Scarlet Letter_, 13, 14;

_Sunday at Home_, _Sights from a Steeple_, _Main Street_, _The

Village Uncle_, _The Ambitious Guest_, _Fancy’s Show Box_,

_David Swan_, _The Snow Image_, _The Great Stone Face_, 14;

_The Marble Faun_, 15;

_The White Old Maid_, 13, 131–142;

_The Seven Vagabonds_, 230

“Heptameron, The,” of the Queen of Navarre, 29

_Hermit of the Prairies, The_, 5

“Hermite de la Chaussée d’Antin, Le,” 6

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 59

Historical tales, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11

Hoax-story, 10, 34

_Horla, Le_ (Maupassant), 212

_Iliad of Sandy Bar, The_ (Harte), 230

“Illinois Intelligencer, The,” 97

“Illinois Magazine, The,” 97

“In the Sixties” (Frederic), 305

_Indian Hater, The_ (Hall), 5

_Inlet of Peach Blossoms, The_ (Willis), 179–191

_Inroad of the Nabajo, The_ (Pike), 115–127

Intensity, in short story, 12, 22, 32, 34

Introductions to tales, 7, 10, 17, 18, 19, 31, 99, 195

Irving, Washington, 1, 4, 5, 6–9, 18, 29, 37–58, 143, 289;

looseness of form, 7, 8;

characterisation, 7;

unity of tone, 7;

influence of, 8, 9, 143, 289;

introductions, 18;

“The Sketch Book,” 7;

“Tales of a Traveller,” 8, 143;

_The Wife_, _The Widow and Her Son_, _The Pride of the Village_,

_The Spectre Bridegroom_, 7;

_Buckthorne and His Friends_, _The German Student_, 8;

_Philip of Pokanoket_, 9;

_Rip Van Winkle_, 7, 8, 37–58

Jacobs, Joseph, 25

James, Henry, 34

_Jean François-les-bas-bleus_ (Nodier), 30

_Johnson’s Old Woman_ (Harte), 230

_Joseph Natterstrom_ (Austin), 1, 10

Jouy, M. de, 6

_Jumping Frog, The_ (Mark Twain), 34

Keepsakes (_see_ Annuals)

Kennedy, John Pendleton, 5, 9;

“Swallow Barn,” 9

Kinetic narrative, and static, 22

_King Pest_ (Poe), 18, 22

Kipling, Rudyard, 34, 212;

_The End of the Passage_, 212

Kirkland, Mrs., 5, 6, 193–210;

biographical and critical note, 193;

“A New Home--Who’ll Follow,” “Forest Life,” “Western Clearings,”

193;

_The Bee-Tree_, 195–210

Kirkland, William, 193

Landor, Walter Savage, 30

“Letters from Arkansas” (Pike), 113

“Letters from the West” (Hall), 97

_Lidivine_ (Nodier), 30

_Ligeia_ (Poe), 16, 18

“Literati” (Poe), 193

Local color, 3–6, 9, 11, 12, 34, 97, 113, 193, 229, 303

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 143–151;

biographical and critical note, 143;

“Outre-Mer,” 143;

_The Notary of Périgueux_, 145–151

Longus, 24, 25

_Love Letters of Smith, The_ (Bunner), 291–301

Lucian, 24

_Luck of Roaring Camp, The_ (Harte), 229, 230

Magazines, American, 2–5, 9, 34 (and see separate titles)

_Main Street_ (Hawthorne), 14

_Maison Tellier, La_ (Maupassant), 230

_Man of Law, The_ (Chaucer), 25

_Marble Faun, The_ (Hawthorne), 15

Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre, the “Heptameron” of, 29

_Marjorie Daw_ (Aldrich), 34

_Mary Dyre_ (Sedgwick), 11

_Matron of Ephesus, The_ (Petronius), 24

Matthews, Brander, 8, 11, 22, 31, 212, 325;

edition of Irving’s “Tales of a Traveller,” 8;

“The Philosophy of the Short-Story,” 11, 22, 31, 212, 325

Maupassant, Guy de, 30, 34, 212, 230;

_La maison Tellier_, 230;

_Le Horla_, 212

Mediæval tales, 23–29, 31

Melodrama, tendency toward, in earlier American tales, 4, 5, 11;

in O’Brien, 211;

in Bret Harte, 230

Mérimée, Prosper, 30–34;

narrative conciseness, 31;

preferred _nouvelle_ to _conte_, 31, 34;

and Poe, 32;

_Carmen_, _Colomba_, _Arsène Guillot_, _L’enlèvement de la

redoute_, _Tamango_, _La vision de Charles XI_, _Le vase

étrusque_, 31;

_La Vénus d’Ille_, 31, 32

_Messe de l’athée, La_ (Balzac), 32

_Methodist’s Story, The_, 4

_Metzengerstein_ (Poe), 16, 18, 22

Milesian tales, 24

“Mirror, The New York,” 177, 178

_Miss Eunice’s Glove_ (Webster), 247–266

Mitchell, Donald G., 1

Mitford, Mary Russell, 193

Moland and d’Héricault, 325

Monologue, Poe’s, 19

Moral tales, 4, 9, 10, 14, 30;

allegory in, 10, 14;

of Mme. de Genlis, 10;

of Nodier, 10, 30;

oriental setting for, 10

_Morella_ (Poe), 16, 17, 18, 21, 22

Morris, William, 25, 326

_Morte Amoureuse, La_ (Gautier), 33

_Mrs. Skaggs’s Husbands_ (Harte), 230

Musset, Alfred de, 33

_My Wife’s Tempter_ (O’Brien), 211

Narantsauk, 4

Nationality in literature, 3–6, 11, 12

“New England Galaxy, The,” 61

“New England Magazine, The,” 2, 131

“New Home, A,--Who’ll Follow” (Kirkland), 193

“New York Mirror, The,” 177, 178

_Nid de rossignols, Le_ (Gautier), 33

Nodier, Charles, 10, 29, 30, 31;

preferred _nouvelle_ to _conte_, 30, 31;

similarity to Hawthorne, 30;

_Les quatre talismans_, 10;

_La combe à l’homme mort_, 29, 30;

_Smarra_, _Jean François-les-bas-bleus_, _Lidivine_, _La filleule

du Seigneur_, 30

“Notes on the Western States” (Hall), 97

_Nouvelle_, and _conte_, 30, 31, 33;

and _roman_, 31

Novel and short story, 8, 12, 13, 15, 21, 25, 26

Novelette, 31

_Novella_, 27, 30

O’Brien, Fitz-James, 211–228;

biographical and critical note, 211;

_The Diamond Lens_, _The Wondersmith_, _Tommatoo_, _My Wife’s

Tempter_, 211;

_What Was It?_, 213–228

_Operation in Money, An_ (Webster), 245

Oriental tales, 10, 25

_Outcasts of Poker Flat, The_ (Harte), 231–243

“Outre-Mer” (Longfellow), 143

“Overland Monthly, The,” 229, 231

_Owner of “Lara,” The_ (Webster), 245

_Pardoner, The_ (Chaucer), 25

Pastoral romance, 25

_Paul Felton_ (Dana), 11

Paulding, James K., _Ben Hadar_, 10

Peck, Harry Thurston, 326

“Pencillings by the Way” (Willis), 177

Periodicals (_see_ Annuals, Magazines)

Perry, Bliss, 326

_Pete Featherton_ (Hall), 5

_Peter Rugg, the Missing Man_ (Austin), 10, 12, 60–95

Petronius, “Cena Trimalchionis,” “Satyricon,” 24

_Philip of Pokanoket_ (Irving), 9

Picaresque story, 24

Pike, Albert, 12, 113–127;

biographical and critical note, 113;

“Prose Sketches and Poems,” 12, 115;

“Letters from Arkansas,” 113;

“Hymns to the Gods,” 113;

_The Inroad of the Nabajo_, 115–127

Plot (_see_ Compression, Culmination Novel, Short story, Time-lapse,

Unity)

Plots, simple or complex, 12, 13

Poe, Edgar Allan, 3, 4, 9, 12, 15–23, 32, 33, 153–176, 193, 211;

genius for form, 9, 16;

preoccupation with structure, 16;

review of Hawthorne, 14, 22;

characters, 16;

detective stories, 16, 20;

harmonisation, 16, 23;

refrain, 16, 17, 21;

vocabulary, 16, 17;

cadence, 16;

suppression of introductions, 18, 19;

simplification for directness, 19;

setting, 19;

habit of monologue, 19;

gradation, 20–23;

artificiality, 20, 32;

grotesque, 22;

kinetic narrative, and static, 22;

conception of unity, 22, 23;

application of Schlegel, 22;

review of Mrs. Sigourney, 22;

symbolism, 23;

and Hawthorne, 18, 20, 23;

and Mérimée, 32;

and Gautier, 33;

and O’Brien, 211;

“Literati,” 193;

_Berenice_, 2, 3, 16, 18, 21, 22, 33;

_Metzengerstein_, 16, 18, 22;

_Morella_, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22;

_Ligeia_, 16, 18;

_King Pest_, 18, 22;

_The Tell-Tale Heart_, 18;

_The Fall of the House of Usher_, 18, 154–176

“Poetics,” of Aristotle, 13, 19, 20

“Portfolio, The,” 97

_Posson Jone_ (Cable), 34

Poushkin, 34

Premonition, 21, 31

_Pride of the Village, The_ (Irving), 7

_Proscrits, Les_ (Balzac), 32

“Prose Sketches and Poems” (Pike), 12, 114

“Puck,” 289

_Quatre talismans, Les_ (Nodier), 10

_Reminiscence of Federalism, A_ (Sedgwick), 11

Richepin, 34

_Rip Van Winkle_ (Irving), 7, 8, 37–58

_Roger Malvin’s Burial_ (Hawthorne), 13

Romances, short, 4, 10, 11, 25, 27;

American, 4, 11;

summary or scenario, 10, 25;

pastoral, 25;

mediæval, 25–28, 29

Romanticism, 4, 7, 8, 11

“Satyricon” (Petronius), 24

_Scarlet Letter, The_ (Hawthorne), 13, 14

Scenario, or summary romance, 10, 13, 24, 26, 27

Schlegel, Poe’s application of, 22

Scott, Sir Walter, influence of, 11, 37

Sedgwick, Charlotte M., _A Reminiscence of Federalism_, _Mary Dyre_,

_The Chivalric Sailor_, 11

Sequence of incidents, 7, 8, 9, 10, 16, 20–23 (_see_ Gradation)

Setting, 16 (_see_ Local color)

_Seven Vagabonds, The_ (Hawthorne), 230

“Short Sixes” (Bunner), 291

Short story, in antiquity, 24, 25;

in middle age, 25–29;

in France, 29–35;

in America, 1–23, 34, 35;

in England, 33, 34;

in other countries, 34;

popularity of, 3, 34;

distinct from tale and novel, 2, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 21, 23–27,

29–31;

unity of, 7, 8, 11–13, 15–23;

intensity of, 12, 13, 32 (_see_ Unity)

“Short-Story, The Philosophy of the” (Matthews), 11, 12, 31, 212, 325

_Sights from a Steeple_ (Hawthorne), 14

Simple plots and complex, 13–15, 25, 26

Simplification of narrative mechanism, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 17–20, 23

(_see_ Unity)

Singleness, 13, 15, 19, 31 (_see_ Unity)

Situation, a single, in short story, 12, 26, 27, 28, 31

“Sketch Book, The” (Irving), 7, 8, 37

“Sketches of the West” (Hall), 97

_Smarra_ (Nodier), 30

_Snow Image, The_ (Hawthorne), 14

“Southern Literary Messenger, The,” 2, 33

“Spectator, The,” 6, 7, 9;

influence on Irving, 6, 7;

on the British novel, 6;

in France, 6;

on J. P. Kennedy, 9;

in Virginia, 9

_Spectre Bridegroom, The_ (Irving), 7

Static narrative, and kinetic, 22

Sterne, Lawrence, influence on Gautier, 33

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 34

Stockton, Frank R., _The Wreck of the Thomas Hyke_, 34

_Sunday at Home_ (Hawthorne), 14

Suspense, 10, 16, 20

“Swallow Barn” (Kennedy), 9

Symbolism, 10, 14, 23, 230

Tale, a constant literary form, 25, 26;

distinct from short story (which see);

anecdote, 10, 24, 26, 29;

summary or fragmentary, 13, 15, 23, 24, 27;

moral, 4, 9, 10, 14, 30;

historical, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11;

yarn, 10, 34;

oriental, 10, 25

Tales, ancient, 23–25;

Milesian, 24;

mediæval, 25–29, 31;

modern French, 30;

American, before 1835, 1–12

“Tales of a Traveller” (Irving), 8, 143

_Tamango_ (Mérimée), 31

Taylor, Bayard, 267–287;

biographical and critical note, 267;

_Who Was She?_, 269–287

_Tell-Tale Heart, The_ (Poe), 18

_Tennessee’s Partner_ (Harte), 230

Theocritus, the fifteenth idyl of, 25

Thoreau, Henry David, 1

Time-lapse, management of, 8, 11, 12, 13, 19–21, 27–29, 31, 32

“Token, The,” 2, 5

_Tommatoo_ (O’Brien), 211

Totality of interest, Poe’s principle of, 22

_Troilus and Criseyde_ (Chaucer), 25

Unities, the classical, 19, 20, 34, 289

Unity, in short story, of purpose, 8, 16–23;

of tone, 7, 16–19, 22, 23;

of form, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16–19, 22, 23, 25–29, 31–33, 59, 113,

143, 177, 193, 211, 230, 289;

of time, 8, 11, 12, 13, 19–21, 27–29, 31, 32;

of place, 12, 13, 19, 27, 29, 32;

by suppression, 19, 32;

and artificiality, 20, 32

_Vase étrusque, Le_ (Mérimée), 31

_Vénus d’Ille, La_ (Mérimée), 31

_Verdugo, El_ (Balzac), 32

_Village Uncle, The_ (Hawthorne), 14

_Vision de Charles XI, La_ (Mérimée), 31

Voltaire, 10

Wallace, Godfrey, _The Esmeralda_, 11

Webster, Albert Falvey, 245–266;

biographical and critical note, 245;

_An Operation in Money_, _The Daphne_, _A Fool’s Moustache_, _The

Owner of Lara_, 245;

_Miss Eunice’s Glove_, 247–266

“Weekly Californian, The,” (Harte), 229

“Western Clearings” (Kirkland), 193, 195

“Western Monthly Magazine, The” (Hall), 97

“Western Monthly Review, The,” 5

“Western Souvenir, The” (Hall), 5, 97, 99

_What Was It?_ (O’Brien), 213–228

_White Old Maid, The_ (Hawthorne), 13, 131–142

Whitman, Walt, 3

_Who Was She?_ (Taylor), 269–287

_Widow and Her Son, The_ (Irving), 7

_Wife, The_ (Irving), 7

“Wilderness and the War Path, The” (Hall), 97

Wilkins, Mary E., 11

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 177–191, 193;

biographical and critical note, 177;

“Pencillings by the Way,” “Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil,” 177;

_The Inlet of Peach Blossoms_, 179–191

_Wives of the Dead, The_ (Hawthorne), 12, 13

_Wondersmith, The_ (O’Brien), 211

_Wreck of the Thomas Hyke, The_ (Stockton), 34

Yarn, 10, 34

_Z. Marcas_ (Balzac), 32

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a

predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they

were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation

marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left

unbalanced.

Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of the pages that referenced them,

have been collected, sequentially renumbered, and placed at the end of

the book.

The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page

references.