This volume does not aim to contain all “the best American humorous
short stories”; there are many other stories equally as good, I
suppose, in much the same vein, scattered through the range of
American literature. I have tried to keep a certain unity of aim
and impression in selecting these stories. In the first place I
determined that the pieces of brief fiction which I included must
first of all be not merely good stories, but good short stories. I
put myself in the position of one who was about to select the best
short stories in the whole range of American literature,[1] but
who, just before he started to do this, was notified that he must
refrain from selecting any of the best American short stories that
did not contain the element of humor to a marked degree. But I have
kept in mind the wide boundaries of the term humor, and also the
fact that the humorous standard should be kept second—although a
close second—to the short story standard.
In view of the necessary limitations as to the volume’s size, I
could not hope to represent all periods of American literature
adequately, nor was this necessary in order to give examples of the
best that has been done in the short story in a humorous vein in
American literature. Probably all types of the short story of humor
are included here, at any rate. Not only copyright restrictions but
in a measure my own opinion have combined to exclude anything by
Joel Chandler Harris—_Uncle Remus_—from the collection. Harris is
primarily—in his best work—a humorist, and only secondarily a short
story writer. As a humorist he is of the first rank; as a writer of
short stories his place is hardly so high. His humor is not mere
funniness and diversion; he is a humorist in the fundamental and
large sense, as are Cervantes, Rabelais, and Mark Twain.
No book is duller than a book of jokes, for what is refreshing in
small doses becomes nauseating when perused in large assignments.
Humor in literature is at its best not when served merely by
itself but when presented along with other ingredients of literary
force in order to give a wide representation of life. Therefore
“professional literary humorists,” as they may be called, have
not been much considered in making up this collection. In the
history of American humor there are three names which stand out
more prominently than all others before Mark Twain, who, however,
also belongs to a wider classification: “Josh Billings” (Henry
Wheeler Shaw, 1815–1885), “Petroleum V. Nasby” (David Ross Locke,
1833–1888), and “Artemus Ward” (Charles Farrar Browne, 1834–1867).
In the history of American humor these names rank high; in the
field of American literature and the American short story they
do not rank so high. I have found nothing of theirs that was
first-class both as humor and as short story. Perhaps just below
these three should be mentioned George Horatio Derby (1823–1861),
author of _Phoenixiana_ (1855) and the _Squibob Papers_ (1859),
who wrote under the name “John Phoenix.” As has been justly said,
“Derby, Shaw, Locke and Browne carried to an extreme numerous
tricks already invented by earlier American humorists, particularly
the tricks of gigantic exaggeration and calm-faced mendacity, but
they are plainly in the main channel of American humor, which had
its origin in the first comments of settlers upon the conditions
of the frontier, long drew its principal inspiration from the
differences between that frontier and the more settled and compact
regions of the country, and reached its highest development in Mark
Twain, in his youth a child of the American frontier, admirer and
imitator of Derby and Browne, and eventually a man of the world
and one of its greatest humorists.”[2] Nor have such later writers
who were essentially humorists as “Bill Nye” (Edgar Wilson Nye,
1850–1896) been considered, because their work does not attain the
literary standard and the short story standard as creditably as it
does the humorous one. When we come to the close of the nineteenth
century the work of such men as “Mr. Dooley” (Finley Peter Dunne,
1867- ) and George Ade (1866- ) stands out. But while these two
writers successfully conform to the exacting critical requirements
of good humor and—especially the former—of good literature,
neither—though Ade more so—attains to the greatest excellence of
the short story. Mr. Dooley of the Archey Road is essentially a
wholesome and wide-poised humorous philosopher, and the author of
_Fables in Slang_ is chiefly a satirist, whether in fable, play or
what not.
This volume might well have started with something by Washington
Irving, I suppose many critics would say. It does not seem to me,
however, that Irving’s best short stories, such as _The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow_ and _Rip Van Winkle_, are essentially humorous
stories, although they are o’erspread with the genial light of
reminiscence. It is the armchair geniality of the eighteenth
century essayists, a constituent of the author rather than of his
material and product. Irving’s best humorous creations, indeed,
are scarcely short stories at all, but rather essaylike sketches,
or sketchlike essays. James Lawson (1799–1880) in his _Tales
and Sketches: by a Cosmopolite_ (1830), notably in _The Dapper
Gentleman’s Story_, is also plainly a follower of Irving. We come
to a different vein in the work of such writers as William Tappan
Thompson (1812–1882), author of the amusing stories in letter form,
_Major Jones’s Courtship_ (1840); Johnson Jones Hooper (1815–1862),
author of _Widow Rugby’s Husband, and Other Tales of Alabama_
(1851); Joseph G. Baldwin (1815–1864), who wrote _The Flush Times
of Alabama and Mississippi_ (1853); and Augustus Baldwin Longstreet
(1790–1870), whose _Georgia Scenes_ (1835) are as important in
“local color” as they are racy in humor. Yet none of these writers
yield the excellent short story which is also a good piece of
humorous literature. But they opened the way for the work of later
writers who did attain these combined excellences.
The sentimental vein of the midcentury is seen in the work of
Seba Smith (1792–1868), Eliza Leslie (1787–1858), Frances Miriam
Whitcher (“Widow Bedott,” 1811–1852), Mary W. Janvrin (1830–1870),
and Alice Bradley Haven Neal (1828–1863). The well-known work of
Joseph Clay Neal (1807–1847) is so all pervaded with caricature and
humor that it belongs with the work of the professional humorist
school rather than with the short story writers. To mention his
_Charcoal Sketches, or Scenes in a Metropolis_ (1837–1849) must
suffice. The work of Seba Smith is sufficiently expressed in his
title, _Way Down East, or Portraitures of Yankee Life_ (1854),
although his _Letters of Major Jack Downing_ (1833) is better
known. Of his single stories may be mentioned _The General Court
and Jane Andrews’ Firkin of Butter_ (October, 1847, _Graham’s
Magazine_). The work of Frances Miriam Whitcher (“Widow Bedott”)
is of somewhat finer grain, both as humor and in other literary
qualities. Her stories or sketches, such as _Aunt Magwire’s Account
of Parson Scrantum’s Donation Party_ (March, 1848, _Godey’s Lady’s
Book_) and _Aunt Magwire’s Account of the Mission to Muffletegawmy_
(July, 1859, _Godey’s_), were afterwards collected in _The Widow
Bedott Papers_ (1855-56-80). The scope of the work of Mary B. Haven
is sufficiently suggested by her story, _Mrs. Bowen’s Parlor and
Spare Bedroom_ (February, 1860, _Godey’s_), while the best stories
of Mary W. Janvrin include _The Foreign Count; or, High Art in
Tattletown_ (October, 1860, _Godey’s_) and _City Relations; or, the
Newmans’ Summer at Clovernook_ (November, 1861, _Godey’s_). The
work of Alice Bradley Haven Neal is of somewhat similar texture.
Her book, _The Gossips of Rivertown, with Sketches in Prose and
Verse_ (1850) indicates her field, as does the single title, _The
Third-Class Hotel_ (December, 1861, _Godey’s_). Perhaps the most
representative figure of this school is Eliza Leslie (1787–1858),
who as “Miss Leslie” was one of the most frequent contributors to
the magazines of the 1830’s, 1840’s and 1850’s. One of her best
stories is _The Watkinson Evening_ (December, 1846, _Godey’s Lady’s
Book_), included in the present volume; others are _The Batson
Cottage_ (November, 1846, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_) and _Juliet Irwin;
or, the Carriage People_ (June, 1847, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_).
One of her chief collections of stories is _Pencil Sketches_
(1833–1837). “Miss Leslie,” wrote Edgar Allan Poe, “is celebrated
for the homely naturalness of her stories and for the broad satire
of her comic style.” She was the editor of _The Gift_ one of the
best annuals of the time, and in that position perhaps exerted her
chief influence on American literature When one has read three or
four representative stories by these seven authors one can grasp
them all. Their titles as a rule strike the keynote. These writers,
except “the Widow Bedott,” are perhaps sentimentalists rather than
humorists in intention, but read in the light of later days their
apparent serious delineations of the frolics and foibles of their
time take on a highly humorous aspect.
George Pope Morris (1802–1864) was one of the founders of _The
New York Mirror_, and for a time its editor. He is best known as
the author of the poem, _Woodman, Spare That Tree_, and other
poems and songs. _The Little Frenchman and His Water Lots_ (1839),
the first story in the present volume, is selected not because
Morris was especially prominent in the field of the short story or
humorous prose but because of this single story’s representative
character. Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) follows with _The Angel of
the Odd_ (October, 1844, _Columbian Magazine_), perhaps the best
of his humorous stories. _The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether_
(November, 1845, _Graham’s Magazine_) may be rated higher, but it
is not essentially a humorous story. Rather it is incisive satire,
with too biting an undercurrent to pass muster in the company of
the genial in literature. Poe’s humorous stories as a whole have
tended to belittle rather than increase his fame, many of them
verging on the inane. There are some, however, which are at least
excellent fooling; few more than that.
Probably this is hardly the place for an extended discussion of
Poe, since the present volume covers neither American literature
as a whole nor the American short story in general, and Poe is
not a humorist in his more notable productions. Let it be said
that Poe invented or perfected—more exactly, perfected his own
invention of—the modern short story; that is his general and
supreme achievement. He also stands superlative for the quality
of three varieties of short stories, those of terror, beauty and
ratiocination. In the first class belong _A Descent into the
Maelstrom_ (1841), _The Pit and the Pendulum_ (1842), _The Black
Cat_ (1843), and _The Cask of Amontillado_ (1846). In the realm
of beauty his notable productions are _The Assignation_ (1834),
_Shadow: a Parable_ (1835), _Ligeia_ (1838), _The Fall of the House
of Usher_ (1839), _Eleonora_ (1841), and _The Masque of the Red
Death_ (1842). The tales of ratiocination—what are now generally
termed detective stories—include _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_
(1841) and its sequel, _The Mystery of Marie Rogêt_ (1842–1843),
_The Gold-Bug_ (1843), _The Oblong Box_ (1844), “_Thou Art the
Man_” (1844), and _The Purloined Letter_ (1844).
Then, too, Poe was a master of style, one of the greatest in
English prose, possibly the greatest since De Quincey, and quite
the most remarkable among American authors. Poe’s influence on the
short story form has been tremendous. Although the _effects_ of
structure may be astounding in their power or unexpectedness, yet
the _means_ by which these effects are brought about are purely
mechanical. Any student of fiction can comprehend them, almost
any practitioner of fiction with a bent toward form can fairly
master them. The merit of any short story production depends on
many other elements as well—the value of the structural element to
the production as a whole depends first on the selection of the
particular sort of structural scheme best suited to the story in
hand, and secondly, on the way in which this is _combined_ with
the piece of writing to form a well-balanced whole. Style is more
difficult to imitate than structure, but on the other hand _the
origin of structural influence_ is more difficult to trace than
that of style. So while, in a general way, we feel that Poe’s
influence on structure in the short story has been great, it is
difficult rather than obvious to trace particular instances. It
is felt in the advance of the general level of short story art.
There is nothing personal about structure—there is everything
personal about style. Poe’s style is both too much his own and
too superlatively good to be successfully imitated—whom have we
had who, even if he were a master of structural effects, could be
a second Poe? Looking at the matter in another way, Poe’s style
is not his own at all. There is nothing “personal” about it in
the petty sense of that term. Rather we feel that, in the case of
this author, universality has been attained. It was Poe’s good
fortune to be himself in style, as often in content, on a plane
of universal appeal. But in some general characteristics of his
style his work can be, not perhaps imitated, but emulated. Greater
vividness, deft impressionism, brevity that strikes instantly to a
telling effect—all these an author may have without imitating any
one’s style but rather imitating excellence. Poe’s “imitators” who
have amounted to anything have not tried to imitate him but to vie
with him. They are striving after perfectionism. Of course the sort
of good style in which Poe indulged is not the kind of style—or the
varieties of style—suited for all purposes, but for the purposes to
which it is adapted it may well be called supreme.
Then as a poet his work is almost or quite as excellent in a
somewhat more restricted range. In verse he is probably the best
artist in American letters. Here his sole pursuit was beauty,
both of form and thought; he is vivid and apt, intensely lyrical
but without much range of thought. He has deep intuitions but no
comprehensive grasp of life.
His criticism is, on the whole, the least important part of his
work. He had a few good and brilliant ideas which came at just the
right time to make a stir in the world, and these his logical mind
and telling style enabled him to present to the best advantage. As
a critic he is neither broad-minded, learned, nor comprehensive.
Nor is he, except in the few ideas referred to, deep. He is,
however, limitedly original—perhaps intensely original within his
narrow scope. But the excellences and limitations of Poe in any one
part of his work were his limitations and excellences in all.
As Poe’s best short stories may be mentioned: _Metzengerstein_
(Jan. 14, 1832, Philadelphia _Saturday Courier_), _Ms. Found in
a Bottle_ (October 19, 1833, _Baltimore Saturday Visiter_), _The
Assignation_ (January, 1834, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), _Berenice_
(March, 1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_), _Morella_ (April,
1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_), _The Unparalleled Adventure
of One Hans Pfaall_ (June, 1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_),
_King Pest: a Tale Containing an Allegory_ (September, 1835,
_Southern Literary Messenger_), _Shadow: a Parable_ (September,
1835, _Southern Literary Messenger_), _Ligeia_ (September, 1838,
_American Museum_), _The Fall of the House of Usher_ (September,
1839, _Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine_), _William Wilson_ (1839:
_Gift for_ 1840), _The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion_
(December, 1839, _Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine_), _The Murders
in the Rue Morgue_ (April, 1841, _Graham’s Magazine_), _A Descent
into the Maelstrom_ (May, 1841, _Graham’s Magazine_), _Eleonora_
(1841: _Gift_ for 1842), _The Masque of the Red Death_ (May, 1842,
_Graham’s Magazine_), _The Pit and the Pendulum_ (1842: _Gift for
1843_), _The Tell-Tale Heart_ (January, 1843, _Pioneer_), _The
Gold-Bug_ (June 21 and 28, 1843, _Dollar Newspaper_), _The Black
Cat_ (August 19, 1843, _United States Saturday Post_), _The Oblong
Box_ (September, 1844, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), _The Angel of the
Odd_ (October, 1844, _Columbian Magazine_), “_Thou Art the Man_”
(November, 1844, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), _The Purloined Letter_
(1844: _Gift_ for 1845), _The Imp of the Perverse_ (July, 1845,
_Graham’s Magazine_), _The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether_
(November, 1845, _Graham’s Magazine_), _The Facts in the Case
of M. Valdemar_ (December, 1845, _American Whig Review_), _The
Cask of Amontillado_ (November, 1846, _Godey’s Lady’s Book_), and
_Lander’s Cottage_ (June 9, 1849, _Flag of Our Union_). Poe’s
chief collections are: _Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque_
(1840), _Tales_ (1845), and _The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe_
(1850–56). These titles have been dropped from recent editions of
his works, however, and the stories brought together under the
title _Tales_, or under subdivisions furnished by his editors, such
as _Tales of Ratiocination_, etc.
Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland (1801–1864) wrote of the
frontier life of the Middle West in the mid-nineteenth century.
Her principal collection of short stories is _Western Clearings_
(1845), from which _The Schoolmaster’s Progress_, first published
in _The Gift_ for 1845 (out in 1844), is taken. Other stories
republished in that collection are _The Ball at Thram’s Huddle_
(April, 1840, _Knickerbocker Magazine_), _Recollections of the
Land-Fever_ (September, 1840, _Knickerbocker Magazine_), and _The
Bee-Tree_ (_The Gift_ for 1842; out in 1841). Her description of
the country schoolmaster, “a puppet cut out of shingle and jerked
by a string,” and the local color in general of this and other
stories give her a leading place among the writers of her period
who combined fidelity in delineating frontier life with sufficient
fictional interest to make a pleasing whole of permanent value.
George William Curtis (1824–1892) gained his chief fame as an
essayist, and probably became best known from the department which
he conducted, from 1853, as _The Editor’s Easy Chair_ for _Harper’s
Magazine_ for many years. His volume, _Prue and I_ (1856), contains
many fictional elements, and a story from it, _Titbottom’s
Spectacles_, which first appeared in Putnam’s Monthly for December,
1854, is given in this volume because it is a good humorous short
story rather than because of its author’s general eminence in
this field. Other stories of his worth noting are _The Shrouded
Portrait_ (in _The Knickerbocker Gallery_, 1855) and _The Millenial
Club_ (November, 1858, _Knickerbocker Magazine_).
Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) is chiefly known as the author
of the short story, _The Man Without a Country_ (December, 1863,
_Atlantic Monthly_), but his venture in the comic vein, _My Double;
and How He Undid Me_ (September, 1859, _Atlantic Monthly_), is
equally worthy of appreciation. It was his first published story
of importance. Other noteworthy stories of his are: _The Brick
Moon_ (October, November and December, 1869, _Atlantic Monthly_),
_Life in the Brick Moon_ (February, 1870, _Atlantic Monthly_),
and _Susan’s Escort_ (May, 1890, _Harper’s Magazine_). His chief
volumes of short stories are: _The Man Without a Country, and
Other Tales_ (1868); _The Brick Moon, and Other Stories_ (1873);
_Crusoe in New York, and Other Tales_ (1880); and _Susan’s Escort,
and Others_ (1897). The stories by Hale which have made his fame
all show ability of no mean order; but they are characterized by
invention and ingenuity rather than by suffusing imagination.
There is not much homogeneity about Hale’s work. Almost any two
stories of his read as if they might have been written by different
authors. For the time being perhaps this is an advantage—his
stories charm by their novelty and individuality. In the long run,
however, this proves rather a handicap. True individuality, in
literature as in the other arts, consists not in “being different”
on different occasions—in different works—so much as in being
_samely_ different from other writers; in being _consistently_
one’s self, rather than diffusedly various selves. This does not
lessen the value of particular stories, of course. It merely
injures Hale’s fame as a whole. Perhaps some will chiefly feel not
so much that his stories are different among themselves, but that
they are not strongly anything—anybody’s—in particular, that they
lack strong personality. The pathway to fame is strewn with stray
exhibitions of talent. Apart from his purely literary productions,
Hale was one of the large moral forces of his time, through
“uplift” both in speech and the written word.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), one of the leading wits of
American literature, is not at all well known as a short story
writer, nor did he write many brief pieces of fiction. His fame
rests chiefly on his poems and on the _Breakfast-Table_ books
(1858-1860-1872-1890). _Old Ironsides_, _The Last Leaf_, _The
Chambered Nautilus_ and _Homesick in Heaven_ are secure of places
in the anthologies of the future, while his lighter verse has
made him one of the leading American writers of “familiar verse.”
Frederick Locker-Lampson in the preface to the first edition of his
_Lyra Elegantiarum_ (1867) declared that Holmes was “perhaps the
best living writer of this species of verse.” His trenchant attack
on _Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions_ (1842) makes us wonder
what would have been his attitude toward some of the beliefs of our
own day; Christian Science, for example. He might have “exposed”
it under some such title as _The Religio-Medical Masquerade_, or
brought the batteries of his humor to bear on it in the manner of
Robert Louis Stevenson’s fable, _Something In It_: “Perhaps there
is not much in it, as I supposed; but there is something in it
after all. Let me be thankful for that.” In Holmes’ long works of
fiction, Elsie Venner (1861), _The Guardian Angel_ (1867) and _A
Mortal Antipathy_ (1885), the method is still somewhat that of
the essayist. I have found a short piece of fiction by him in the
March, 1832, number of _The New England Magazine_, called _The
Début_, signed O.W.H. _The Story of Iris_ in _The Professor at the
Breakfast Table_, which ran in _The Atlantic_ throughout 1859, and
_A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters_ (January,
1861, _Atlantic_) are his only other brief fictions of which I
am aware. The last named has been given place in the present
selection because it is characteristic of a certain type and period
of American humor, although its short story qualities are not
particularly strong.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), who achieved fame as “Mark
Twain,” is only incidentally a short story writer, although he
wrote many short pieces of fiction. His humorous quality, I mean,
is so preponderant, that one hardly thinks of the form. Indeed,
he is never very strong in fictional construction, and of the
modern short story art he evidently knew or cared little. He is
a humorist in the large sense, as are Rabelais and Cervantes,
although he is also a humorist in various restricted applications
of the word that are wholly American. _The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County_ was his first publication of importance, and
it saw the light in the Nov. 18, 1865, number of _The Saturday
Press_. It was republished in the collection, _The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches_, in 1867.
Others of his best pieces of short fiction are: _The Canvasser’s
Tale_ (December, 1876, _Atlantic Monthly_), _The £1,000,000 Bank
Note_ (January, 1893, _Century Magazine_), _The Esquimau Maiden’s
Romance_ (November, 1893, _Cosmopolitan_), _Traveling with a
Reformer_ (December, 1893, _Cosmopolitan_), _The Man That Corrupted
Hadleyburg_ (December, 1899, _Harper’s_), _A Double-Barrelled
Detective Story_ (January and February, 1902, _Harper’s_) _A Dog’s
Tale_ (December, 1903, _Harper’s_), and _Eve’s Diary_ (December,
1905, _Harper’s_). Among Twain’s chief collections of short
stories are: _The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,
and Other Sketches_ (1867); _The Stolen White Elephant_ (1882),
_The £1,000,000 Bank Note_ (1893), and _The Man That Corrupted
Hadleyburg, and Other Stories and Sketches_ (1900).
Harry Stillwell Edwards (1855– ), a native of Georgia, together
with Sarah Barnwell Elliott (? – ) and Will N. Harben (1858–1919)
have continued in the vein of that earlier writer, Augustus
Baldwin Longstreet (1790–1870), author of _Georgia Scenes_ (1835).
Edwards’ best work is to be found in his short stories of black
and white life after the manner of Richard Malcolm Johnston. He
has written several novels, but he is essentially a writer of
human-nature sketches. “He is humorous and picturesque,” says
Fred Lewis Pattee, “and often he is for a moment the master of
pathos, but he has added nothing new and nothing commandingly
distinctive.”[3] An exception to this might be made in favor of
_Elder Brown’s Backslide_ (August, 1885, _Harper’s_), a story in
which all the elements are so nicely balanced that the result
may well be called a masterpiece of objective humor and pathos.
Others of his short stories especially worthy of mention are: _Two
Runaways_ (July, 1886, _Century_), _Sister Todhunter’s Heart_
(July, 1887, _Century_), “_De Valley an’ de Shadder_” (January,
1888, _Century_), _An Idyl of “Sinkin’ Mount’in”_ (October,
1888, _Century_), _The Rival Souls_ (March, 1889, _Century_),
_The Woodhaven Goat_ (March, 1899, _Century_), and _The Shadow_
(December, 1906, _Century_). His chief collections are _Two
Runaways, and Other Stories_ (1889) and _His Defense, and Other
Stories_ (1898).
The most notable, however, of the group of short story writers of
Georgia life is perhaps Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822–1898). He
stands between Longstreet and the younger writers of Georgia life.
His first book was _Georgia Sketches, by an Old Man_ (1864). _The
Goose Pond School_, a short story, had been written in 1857; it
was not published, however, till it appeared in the November and
December, 1869, numbers of a Southern magazine, _The New Eclectic_,
over the pseudonym “Philemon Perch.” His famous _Dukesborough
Tales_ (1871–1874) was largely a republication of the earlier book.
Other noteworthy collections of his are: _Mr. Absalom Billingslea
and Other Georgia Folk_ (1888), _Mr. Fortner’s Marital Claims,
and Other Stories_ (1892), and _Old Times in Middle Georgia_
(1897). Among individual stories stand out: _The Organ-Grinder_
(July, 1870, _New Eclectic_), _Mr. Neelus Peeler’s Conditions_
(June, 1879, _Scribner’s Monthly_), _The Brief Embarrassment of
Mr. Iverson Blount_ (September, 1884, _Century_); _The Hotel
Experience of Mr. Pink Fluker_ (June, 1886, _Century_), republished
in the present collection; _The Wimpy Adoptions_ (February, 1887,
_Century_), _The Experiments of Miss Sally Cash_ (September, 1888,
_Century_), and _Our Witch_ (March, 1897, _Century_). Johnston
must be ranked almost with Bret Harte as a pioneer in “local
color” work, although his work had little recognition until his
_Dukesborough Tales_ were republished by Harper & Brothers in 1883.
Bret Harte (1839–1902) is mentioned here owing to the late date
of his story included in this volume, _Colonel Starbottle for
the Plaintiff_ (March, 1901, _Harper’s_), although his work as a
whole of course belongs to an earlier period of our literature.
It is now well-thumbed literary history that _The Luck of Roaring
Camp_ (August, 1868, _Overland_) and _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_
(January, 1869, _Overland_) brought him a popularity that, in its
suddenness and extent, had no precedent in American literature save
in the case of Mrs. Stowe and _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. According to
Harte’s own statement, made in the retrospect of later years, he
set out deliberately to add a new province to American literature.
Although his work has been belittled because he has chosen
exceptional and theatric happenings, yet his real strength came
from his contact with Western life.
Irving and Dickens and other models served only to teach him his
art. “Finally,” says Prof. Pattee, “Harte was the parent of the
modern form of the short story. It was he who started Kipling and
Cable and Thomas Nelson Page. Few indeed have surpassed him in the
mechanics of this most difficult of arts. According to his own
belief, the form is an American product ... Harte has described
the genesis of his own art. It sprang from the Western humor and
was developed by the circumstances that surrounded him. Many of
his short stories are models. They contain not a superfluous word,
they handle a single incident with grapic power, they close without
moral or comment. The form came as a natural evolution from his
limitations and powers. With him the story must of necessity be
brief.... Bret Harte was the artist of impulse, the painter of
single burning moments, the flashlight photographer who caught
in lurid detail one dramatic episode in the life of a man or a
community and left the rest in darkness.”[4]
Harte’s humor is mostly “Western humor” There is not always
uproarious merriment, but there is a constant background of humor.
I know of no more amusing scene in American literature than that in
the courtroom when the Colonel gives his version of the deacon’s
method of signaling to the widow in Harte’s story included in the
present volume, _Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff_. Here is
part of it:
True to the instructions she had received from him, her lips
part in the musical utterance (the Colonel lowered his voice
in a faint falsetto, presumably in fond imitation of his fair
client) “Kerree!” Instantly the night becomes resonant with the
impassioned reply (the Colonel here lifted his voice in stentorian
tones), “Kerrow!” Again, as he passes, rises the soft “Kerree!”;
again, as his form is lost in the distance, comes back the deep
“Kerrow!”
While Harte’s stories all have in them a certain element or
background of humor, yet perhaps the majority of them are chiefly
romantic or dramatic even more than they are humorous.
Among the best of his short stories may be mentioned: _The Luck of
Roaring Camp_ (August, 1868, _Overland_), _The Outcasts of Poker
Flat_ (January, 1869, _Overland_), _Tennessee’s Partner_ (October,
1869, _Overland_), _Brown of Calaveras_ (March, 1870, _Overland_),
_Flip: a California Romance_ (in _Flip, and Other Stories_, 1882),
_Left Out on Lone Star Mountain_ (January, 1884, _Longman’s_), _An
Ingenue of the Sierras_ (July, 1894, _McClure’s_), _The Bell-Ringer
of Angel’s_ (in _The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and Other Stories_,
1894), _Chu Chu_ (in _The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and Other
Stories_, 1894), _The Man and the Mountain_ (in _The Ancestors of
Peter Atherly, and Other Tales_, 1897), _Salomy Jane’s Kiss_ (in
_Stories in Light and Shadow_, 1898), _The Youngest Miss Piper_
(February, 1900, _Leslie’s Monthly_), _Colonel Starbottle for the
Plaintiff_ (March, 1901, _Harper’s_), _A Mercury of the Foothills_
(July, 1901, _Cosmopolitan_), _Lanty Foster’s Mistake_ (December,
1901, _New England_), _An Ali Baba of the Sierras_ (January 4,
1902, _Saturday Evening Post_), and _Dick Boyle’s Business Card_
(in _Trent’s Trust, and Other Stories_, 1903). Among his notable
collections of stories are: _The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other
Sketches_ (1870), _Flip, and Other Stories_ (1882), _On the
Frontier_ (1884), _Colonel Starbottle’s Client, and Some Other
People_ (1892), _A Protégé of Jack Hamlin’s, and Other Stories_
(1894), _The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and Other Stories_ (1894),
_The Ancestors of Peter Atherly, and Other Tales_ (1897), _Openings
in the Old Trail_ (1902), and _Trent’s Trust, and Other Stories_
(1903). The titles and makeup of several of his collections were
changed when they came to be arranged in the complete edition of
his works.[5]
Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896) is one of the humorous geniuses
of American literature. He is equally at home in clever verse or
the brief short story. Prof. Fred Lewis Pattee has summed up his
achievement as follows: “Another [than Stockton] who did much to
advance the short story toward the mechanical perfection it had
attained to at the close of the century was Henry Cuyler Bunner,
editor of _Puck_ and creator of some of the most exquisite _vers de
société_ of the period. The title of one of his collections, _Made
in France: French Tales Retold with a U.S. Twist_ (1893), forms an
introduction to his fiction. Not that he was an imitator; few have
been more original or have put more of their own personality into
their work. His genius was Gallic. Like Aldrich, he approached the
short story from the fastidious standpoint of the lyric poet. With
him, as with Aldrich, art was a matter of exquisite touches, of
infinite compression, of almost imperceptible shadings. The lurid
splashes and the heavy emphasis of the local colorists offended his
sensitive taste: he would work with suggestion, with microscopic
focussings, and always with dignity and elegance. He was more
American than Henry James, more even than Aldrich. He chose always
distinctively American subjects—New York City was his favorite
theme—and his work had more depth of soul than Stockton’s or
Aldrich’s. The story may be trivial, a mere expanded anecdote, yet
it is sure to be so vitally treated that, like Maupassant’s work,
it grips and remains, and, what is more, it lifts and chastens or
explains. It may be said with assurance that _Short Sixes_ marks
one of the high places which have been attained by the American
short story.”[6]
Among Bunner’s best stories are: _Love in Old Cloathes_ (September,
1883, _Century), A Successful Failure_ (July, 1887, _Puck_), _The
Love-Letters of Smith_ (July 23, 1890, _Puck_) _The Nice People_
(July 30, 1890, _Puck_), _The Nine Cent-Girls_ (August 13, 1890,
_Puck_), _The Two Churches of ’Quawket_ (August 27, 1890, _Puck_),
_A Round-Up_ (September 10, 1890, _Puck_), _A Sisterly Scheme_
(September 24, 1890, _Puck_), _Our Aromatic Uncle_ (August, 1895,
_Scribner’s_), _The Time-Table Test_ (in _The Suburban Sage_,
1896). He collaborated with Prof. Brander Matthews in several
stories, notably in _The Documents in the Case_ (Sept., 1879,
_Scribner’s Monthly_). His best collections are: _Short Sixes:
Stories to be Read While the Candle Burns_ (1891), _More Short
Sixes_ (1894), and _Love in Old Cloathes, and Other Stories_ (1896).
After Poe and Hawthorne almost the first author in America to make
a vertiginous impression by his short stories was Bret Harte. The
wide and sudden popularity he attained by the publication of his
two short stories, _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ (1868) and _The
Outcasts of Poker Flat_ (1869), has already been noted.[7] But
one story just before Harte that astonished the fiction audience
with its power and art was Harriet Prescott Spofford’s (1835– )
_The Amber Gods_ (January and February, 1860, Atlantic), with its
startling ending, “I must have died at ten minutes past one.”
After Harte the next story to make a great sensation was Thomas
Bailey Aldrich’s _Marjorie Daw_ (April, 1873, _Atlantic_), a story
with a surprise at the end, as had been his _A Struggle for Life_
(July, 1867, _Atlantic_), although it was only _Marjorie Daw_ that
attracted much attention at the time. Then came George Washington
Cable’s (1844– ) “_Posson Jone’_,” (April 1, 1876, _Appleton’s
Journal_) and a little later Charles Egbert Craddock’s (1850– )
_The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove_ (May, 1878, _Atlantic_) and
_The Star in the Valley_ (November, 1878, _Atlantic_). But the
work of Cable and Craddock, though of sterling worth, won its way
gradually. Even Edward Everett Hale’s (1822–1909) _My Double; and
How He Undid Me_ (September, 1859, _Atlantic_) and _The Man Without
a Country_ (December, 1863, _Atlantic_) had fallen comparatively
still-born. The truly astounding short story successes, after Poe
and Hawthorne, then, were Spofford, Bret Harte and Aldrich. Next
came Frank Richard Stockton (1834–1902). “The interest created
by the appearance of _Marjorie Daw_,” says Prof. Pattee, “was
mild compared with that accorded to Frank R. Stockton’s _The
Lady or the Tiger?_ (1884). Stockton had not the technique of
Aldrich nor his naturalness and ease. Certainly he had not his
atmosphere of the _beau monde_ and his grace of style, but in
whimsicality and unexpectedness and in that subtle art that makes
the obviously impossible seem perfectly plausible and commonplace
he surpassed not only him but Edward Everett Hale and all others.
After Stockton and _The Lady or the Tiger?_ it was realized even
by the uncritical that short story writing had become a subtle
art and that the master of its subtleties had his reader at his
mercy.”[8] The publication of Stockton’s short stories covers
a period of over forty years, from _Mahala’s Drive_ (November,
1868, _Lippincott’s_) to _The Trouble She Caused When She Kissed_
(December, 1911, _Ladies’ Home Journal_), published nine years
after his death. Among the more notable of his stories may be
mentioned: _The Transferred Ghost_ (May, 1882, _Century_), _The
Lady or the Tiger?_ (November, 1882, _Century_), _The Reversible
Landscape_ (July, 1884, _Century_), _The Remarkable Wreck of the
“Thomas Hyke”_ (August, 1884, _Century_), _“His Wife’s Deceased
Sister”_ (January, 1884, _Century_), _A Tale of Negative Gravity_
(December, 1884, _Century_), _The Christmas Wreck_ (in _The
Christmas Wreck, and Other Stories_, 1886), _Amos Kilbright_
(in _Amos Kilbright, His Adscititious Experiences, with Other
Stories_, 1888), _Asaph_ (May, 1892, _Cosmopolitan_), _My Terminal
Moraine_ (April 26, 1892, Collier’s _Once a Week Library_), _The
Magic Egg_ (June, 1894, _Century_), _The Buller-Podington Compact_
(August, 1897, _Scribner’s_), and _The Widow’s Cruise_ (in _A
Story-Teller’s Pack_, 1897). Most of his best work was gathered
into the collections: _The Lady or the Tiger?, and Other Stories_
(1884), _The Bee-Man of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales_ (1887),
_Amos Kilbright, His Adscititious Experiences, with Other Stories_
(1888), _The Clocks of Rondaine, and Other Stories_ (1892), _A
Chosen Few_ (1895), _A Story-Teller’s Pack_ (1897), and _The
Queen’s Museum, and Other Fanciful Tales_ (1906).
After Stockton and Bunner come O. Henry (1862–1910) and Jack London
(1876–1916), apostles of the burly and vigorous in fiction. Beside
or above them stand Henry James (1843–1916)—although he belongs
to an earlier period as well—Edith Wharton (1862– ), Alice Brown
(1857– ), Margaret Wade Deland (1857– ), and Katharine Fullerton
Gerould (1879– ), practitioners in all that O. Henry and London are
not, of the finer fields, the more subtle nuances of modern life.
With O. Henry and London, though perhaps less noteworthy, are to
be grouped George Randolph Chester (1869– ) and Irvin Shrewsbury
Cobb (1876– ). Then, standing rather each by himself, are Melville
Davisson Post (1871– ), a master of psychological mystery stories,
and Wilbur Daniel Steele (1886– ), whose work it is hard to
classify. These ten names represent much that is best in American
short story production since the beginning of the twentieth
century (1900). Not all are notable for humor; but inasmuch as any
consideration of the American humorous short story cannot be wholly
dissociated from a consideration of the American short story in
general, it has seemed not amiss to mention these authors here.
Although Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) lived on into the twentieth
century and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1862– ) is still with us, the
best and most typical work of these two writers belongs in the last
two decades of the previous century. To an earlier period also
belong Charles Egbert Craddock (1850– ), George Washington Cable
(1844– ), Thomas Nelson Page (1853– ), Constance Fenimore Woolson
(1848–1894), Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835– ), Hamlin Garland
(1860– ), Ambrose Bierce (1842–?), Rose Terry Cooke (1827–1892),
and Kate Chopin (1851–1904).
“O. Henry” was the pen name adopted by William Sydney Porter.
He began his short story career by contributing _Whistling
Dick’s Christmas Stocking_ to _McClure’s Magazine_ in 1899. He
followed it with many stories dealing with Western and South-and
Central-American life, and later came most of his stories of
the life of New York City, in which field lies most of his best
work. He contributed more stories to the _New York World_ than
to any other one publication—as if the stories of the author who
later came to be hailed as “the American Maupassant” were not
good enough for the “leading” magazines but fit only for the
sensation-loving public of the Sunday papers! His first published
story that showed distinct strength was perhaps _A Blackjack
Bargainer_ (August, 1901, _Munsey’s_). He followed this with such
masterly stories as: _The Duplicity of Hargraves_ (February,
1902, _Junior Munsey_), _The Marionettes_ (April, 1902, _Black
Cat_), _A Retrieved Reformation_ (April, 1903, _Cosmopolitan_),
_The Guardian of the Accolade_ (May, 1903, _Cosmopolitan_), _The
Enchanted Kiss_ (February, 1904, _Metropolitan_), _The Furnished
Room_ (August 14, 1904, _New York World_), _An Unfinished Story_
(August, 1905, _McClure’s_), _The Count and the Wedding Guest_
(October 8, 1905, _New York World_), _The Gift of the Magi_
(December 10, 1905, _New York World_), _The Trimmed Lamp_ (August,
1906, _McClure’s_), _Phoebe_ (November, 1907, _Everybody’s_), _The
Hiding of Black Bill_ (October, 1908, _Everybody’s_), _No Story_
(June, 1909, _Metropolitan_), _A Municipal Report_ (November, 1909,
_Hampton’s_), _A Service of Love_ (in _The Four Million_, 1909),
_The Pendulum_ (in _The Trimmed Lamp_, 1910), _Brickdust Row_
(in _The Trimmed Lamp_, 1910), and _The Assessor of Success_ (in
_The Trimmed Lamp_, 1910). Among O. Henry’s best volumes of short
stories are: _The Four Million_ (1909), _Options_ (1909), _Roads
of Destiny_ (1909), _The Trimmed Lamp_ (1910), _Strictly Business:
More Stories of the Four Million_ (1910), _Whirligigs_ (1910), and
_Sixes and Sevens_ (1911).
“Nowhere is there anything just like them. In his best work—and
his tales of the great metropolis are his best—he is unique. The
soul of his art is unexpectedness. Humor at every turn there
is, and sentiment and philosophy and surprise. One never may be
sure of himself. The end is always a sensation. No foresight may
predict it, and the sensation always is genuine. Whatever else
O. Henry was, he was an artist, a master of plot and diction, a
genuine humorist, and a philosopher. His weakness lay in the very
nature of his art. He was an entertainer bent only on amusing and
surprising his reader. Everywhere brilliancy, but too often it is
joined to cheapness; art, yet art merging swiftly into caricature.
Like Harte, he cannot be trusted. Both writers on the whole may be
said to have lowered the standards of American literature, since
both worked in the surface of life with theatric intent and always
without moral background, O. Henry moves, but he never lifts. All
is fortissimo; he slaps the reader on the back and laughs loudly as
if he were in a bar-room. His characters, with few exceptions, are
extremes, caricatures. Even his shop girls, in the limning of whom
he did his best work, are not really individuals; rather are they
types, symbols. His work was literary vaudeville, brilliant, highly
amusing, and yet vaudeville.”[9] _The Duplicity of Hargraves_, the
story by O. Henry given in this volume, is free from most of his
defects. It has a blend of humor and pathos that puts it on a plane
of universal appeal.
George Randolph Chester (1869– ) gained distinction by creating
the genial modern business man of American literature who is not
content to “get rich quick” through the ordinary channels. Need
I say that I refer to that amazing compound of likeableness and
sharp practices, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford? The story of his
included in this volume, _Bargain Day at Tutt House_ (June, 1905,
_McClure’s_), was nearly his first story; only two others, which
came out in _The Saturday Evening Post_ in 1903 and 1904, preceded
it. Its breathless dramatic action is well balanced by humor.
Other stories of his deserving of special mention are: _A Corner
in Farmers_ (February, 29, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _A
Fortune in Smoke_ (March 14, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Easy
Money_ (November 14, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _The Triple
Cross_ (December 5, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Spoiling
the Egyptians_ (December 26, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_),
_Whipsawed!_ (January 16, 1909, _Saturday Evening Post_), _The
Bubble Bank_ (January 30 and February 6, 1909, _Saturday Evening
Post_), _Straight Business_ (February 27, 1909, _Saturday Evening
Post_), _Sam Turner: a Business Man’s Love Story_ (March 26, April
2 and 9, 1910, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Fundamental Justice_
(July 25, 1914, _Saturday Evening Post_), _A Scropper Patcher_
(October, 1916, _Everybody’s_), and _Jolly Bachelors_ (February,
1918, _Cosmopolitan_). His best collections are: _Get-Rich-Quick
Wallingford_ (1908), _Young Wallingford_ (1910), _Wallingford in
His Prime_ (1913), and _Wallingford and Blackie Daw_ (1913). It is
often difficult to find in his books short stories that one may
be looking for, for the reason that the titles of the individual
stories have been removed in order to make the books look like
novels subdivided into chapters.
Grace MacGowan Cooke (1863– ) is a writer all of whose work has
interest and perdurable stuff in it, but few are the authors whose
achievements in the American short story stand out as a whole. In
_A Call_ (August, 1906, _Harper’s_) she surpasses herself and is
not perhaps herself surpassed by any of the humorous short stories
that have come to the fore so far in America in the twentieth
century. The story is no less delightful in its fidelity to fact
and understanding of young human nature than in its relish of
humor. Some of her stories deserving of special mention are: _The
Capture of Andy Proudfoot_ (June, 1904, _Harper’s_), _In the
Strength of the Hills_ (December, 1905, _Metropolitan_), _The
Machinations of Ocoee Gallantine_ (April, 1906, _Century_), _A
Call_ (August, 1906, _Harper’s_), _Scott Bohannon’s Bond _(May
4, 1907, _Collier’s_), and _A Clean Shave_ (November, 1912,
_Century_). Her best short stories do not seem to have been
collected in volumes as yet, although she has had several notable
long works of fiction published, such as _The Power and the Glory_
(1910), and several good juveniles.
William James Lampton (?–1917), who was known to many of his
admirers as Will Lampton or as W.J.L. merely, was one of the most
unique and interesting characters of literary and Bohemian New York
from about 1895 to his death in 1917. I remember walking up Fifth
Avenue with him one Sunday afternoon just after he had shown me a
letter from the man who was then Comptroller of the Currency. The
letter was signed so illegibly that my companion was in doubts
as to the sender, so he suggested that we stop at a well-known
hotel at the corner of 59th Street, and ask the manager who the
Comptroller of the Currency then was, so that he might know whom
the letter was from. He said that the manager of a big hotel like
that, where many prominent people stayed, would be sure to know.
When this problem had been solved to our satisfaction, John Skelton
Williams proving to be the man, Lampton said, “Now you’ve told me
who he is, I’ll show you who I am.” So he asked for a copy of _The
American Magazine_ at a newsstand in the hotel corridor, opened it,
and showed the manager a full-page picture of himself clad in a
costume suggestive of the time of Christopher Columbus, with high
ruffs around his neck, that happened to appear in the magazine the
current month. I mention this incident to illustrate the lack of
conventionality and whimsical originality of the man, that stood
out no less forcibly in his writings than in his daily life. He had
little use for “doing the usual thing in the usual sort of way.” He
first gained prominence by his book of verse, _Yawps_ (1900). His
poems were free from convention in technique as well as in spirit,
although their chief innovation was simply that as a rule there
was no regular number of syllables in a line; he let the lines be
any length they wanted to be, to fit the sense or the length of
what he had to say. He once said to me that if anything of his was
remembered he thought it would be his poem, _Lo, the Summer Girl_.
His muse often took the direction of satire, but it was always
good-natured even when it hit the hardest. He had in his makeup
much of the detached philosopher, like Cervantes and Mark Twain.
There was something cosmic about his attitude to life, and this
showed in much that he did. He was the only American writer of
humorous verse of his day whom I always cared to read, or whose
lines I could remember more than a few weeks. This was perhaps
because his work was never _merely_ humorous, but always had a big
sweep of background to it, like the ruggedness of the Kentucky
mountains from which he came. It was Colonel George Harvey, then
editor of _Harper’s Weekly_, who had started the boom to make
Woodrow Wilson President. Wilson afterwards, at least seemingly,
repudiated his sponsor, probably because of Harvey’s identification
with various moneyed interests. Lampton’s poem on the subject, with
its refrain, “Never again, said Colonel George,” I remember as one
of the most notable of his poems on current topics. But what always
seemed to me the best of his poems dealing with matters of the hour
was one that I suggested he write, which dealt with gift-giving to
the public, at about the time that Andrew Carnegie was making a big
stir with his gifts for libraries, beginning:
Dunno, perhaps
One of the yaps
Like me would make
A holy break
Doing his turn
With money to burn.
Anyhow, I
Wouldn’t shy
Making a try!
and containing, among many effective touches, the pathetic lines,
. . . I’d help
The poor who try to help themselves,
Who have to work so hard for bread
They can’t get very far ahead.
When James Lane Allen’s novel, _The Reign of Law_, came out (1900),
a little quatrain by Lampton that appeared in _The Bookman_
(September, 1900) swept like wildfire across the country, and was
read by a hundred times as many people as the book itself:
“The Reign of Law”?
Well, Allen, you’re lucky;
It’s the first time it ever
Rained law in Kentucky!
The reader need not be reminded that at that period Kentucky family
feuds were well to the fore. As Lampton had started as a poet, the
editors were bound to keep him pigeon-holed as far as they could,
and his ambition to write short stories was not at first much
encouraged by them. His predicament was something like that of the
chief character of Frank R. Stockton’s story, “_His Wife’s Deceased
Sister_” (January, 1884, _Century_), who had written a story so
good that whenever he brought the editors another story they
invariably answered in substance, “We’re afraid it won’t do. Can’t
you give us something like ‘_His Wife’s Deceased Sister_’?” This
was merely Stockton’s turning to account his own somewhat similar
experience with the editors after his story, _The Lady or the
Tiger_? (November, 1882, _Century_) appeared. Likewise the editors
didn’t want Lampton’s short stories for a while because they liked
his poems so well.
Do I hear some critics exclaiming that there is nothing remarkable
about _How the Widow Won the Deacon_, the story by Lampton
included in this volume? It handles an amusing situation lightly
and with grace. It is one of those things that read easily and
are often difficult to achieve. Among his best stories are: _The
People’s Number of the Worthyville Watchman_ (May 12, 1900,
_Saturday Evening Post_), _Love’s Strange Spell_ (April 27, 1901,
_Saturday Evening Post_), _Abimelech Higgins’ Way_ (August 24,
1001, _Saturday Evening Post_), _A Cup of Tea_ (March, 1902,
_Metropolitan_), _Winning His Spurs_ (May, 1904, _Cosmopolitan_),
_The Perfidy of Major Pulsifer_ (November, 1909, _Cosmopolitan_),
_How the Widow Won the Deacon_ (April, 1911, _Harper’s Bazaar_),
and _A Brown Study_ (December, 1913, _Lippincott’s_). There is no
collection as yet of his short stories. Although familiarly known
as “Colonel” Lampton, and although of Kentucky, he was not merely
a “Kentucky Colonel,” for he was actually appointed Colonel on the
staff of the governor of Kentucky. At the time of his death he was
about to be made a brigadier-general and was planning to raise a
brigade of Kentucky mountaineers for service in the Great War. As
he had just struck his stride in short story writing, the loss to
literature was even greater than the patriotic loss.
_Gideon_ (April, 1914, _Century_), by Wells Hastings (1878– ), the
story with which this volume closes, calls to mind the large number
of notable short stories in American literature by writers who have
made no large name for themselves as short story writers, or even
otherwise in letters. American literature has always been strong in
its “stray” short stories of note. In Mr. Hastings’ case, however,
I feel that the fame is sure to come. He graduated from Yale in
1902, collaborated with Brian Hooker (1880- ) in a novel, _The
Professor’s Mystery_ (1911) and alone wrote another novel, _The
Man in the Brown Derby_ (1911). His short stories include: _The
New Little Boy_ (July, 1911, _American_), _That Day_ (September,
1911, _American_), _The Pick-Up_ (December, 1911, _Everybody’s_),
and _Gideon_ (April, 1914, _Century_). The last story stands out.
It can be compared without disadvantage to the best work, or all
but the very best work, of Thomas Nelson Page, it seems to me. And
from the reader’s standpoint it has the advantage—is this not also
an author’s advantage?—of a more modern setting and treatment. Mr.
Hastings is, I have been told, a director in over a dozen large
corporations. Let us hope that his business activities will not
keep him too much away from the production of literature—for to
rank as a piece of literature, something of permanent literary
value, _Gideon_ is surely entitled.