_O. HENRY MEMORIAL
AWARD
PRIZE STORIES
of 1923_
_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD_
PRIZE STORIES
_of_ 1923
CHOSEN BY THE SOCIETY OF
ARTS AND SCIENCES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS
_Author of “A Handbook on Story Writing,”
“Our Short Story Writers,” Etc._
_Associate Professor of English, Hunter College
of the City of New York_
_Instructor in Story Writing, Columbia University_
(_Extension Teaching and
Summer Session_)
[Illustration: colophon]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1924
COPYRIGHT, 1923, 1924, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Copyright, 1922, 1923, by The McCall Company and The Pictorial
Review Company.
Copyright, 1923, by Harper & Brothers, The Curtis Publishing
Company in the United States and Great Britain, McClure Publishing
Company, New York; The Century Co., Pearson’s Magazine (The New
Pearson’s), The Frank A. Munsey Company, P. F. Collier and Son
Company in the United States and Great Britain, International
Magazine Company, Consolidated Magazines Corporation (The Red Book
Magazine.)
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PRELUDE. By Edgar Valentine Smith 1
A FRIEND OF NAPOLEON. By Richard Connell 19
TOWERS OF FAME. By Elizabeth Irons Folsom 38
PHANTOM ADVENTURE. By Floyd Dell 46
THE DISTANT STREET. By Francis Edwards Faragoh 59
THE WAGER. By Isa Urquhart Glenn 75
CÉLESTINE. By James Hopper 92
WITCH MARY. By Genevieve Larsson 104
THE BAMBOO TRAP. By Robert S. Lemmon 120
THE HAT OF EIGHT REFLECTIONS. By James Mahoney 134
HOME-BREW. By Grace Sartwell Mason 159
DERRICK’S RETURN. By Gouverneur Morris 182
SHADOWED. By Mary Synon 193
THE ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR BILL. By Booth Tarkington 211
NICE NEIGHBOURS. By Mary S. Watts 229
NOT WANTED. By Jesse Lynch Williams 247
INTRODUCTION
This collection is that of no single person, whose prejudices
conceivably might emphasize one type or another; but of editors,
critics, and writers of fiction, whose combined opinion insures
catholicity of taste and freedom from bias.
The fifth annual volume presented by the Committee from the Society of
Arts and Sciences, it contains in the judgment of the Committee
twenty-five or thirty per cent. of the best stories published in
1923.[A]
In previous volumes the Committee have stated the requisites of a good
story. Hag-ridden by no formulæ, the Committee believe that every worthy
narrative--whether Hebraic tale, Greek myth, or American short
story--must yet meet specific tests. For example, characters engage in a
struggle or become involved in difficulties out of which they emerge
successfully or unsuccessfully. Apply this limitation to the
David-Goliath fight, Phaëton’s sun chariot drive, or to Papa Chibou’s
rape of Napoleon; it generously includes all.
The Committee apprehend, _a posteriori_, the writer’s problems of
structure, characterization, colour, rhythm; they recognize the skill
indispensable to concealing technique; they feel the beauty of the
finished work, whose joinings are not discernible but whose exquisite
art and pulsing nature--if they may paraphrase O. Henry--take them by
the throat like the quinsy. Every short story may appear, and should
appear, a mature Pallas, though the sympathetic analyst may deduce, as
the author will recall, the slow processes of birth and growth.
Over the value of this year’s fiction compared with that of recent
years, the Committee disagree. The pessimist says the level is lower;
the optimist declares it higher. “A fair plateau marked by a few
peaks,” says another. They agree on the following list as ranking first:
Babcock, Edwina Stanton, Mr. Cardeezer (_Harper’s_, May).
Beer, Thomas, Dolceda (_Saturday Evening Post_, November 3).
Benet, Stephen Vincent, The Golden Bessie (_Everybody’s_, June).
Buckley, F. R., Habit (_Adventure_, April 30).
Byrne, Donn, A Story Against Women (_Collier’s_, December 8).
Cobb, Irvin S., Red-Handed (_Cosmopolitan_, June); The Unbroken
Chain (_Cosmopolitan_, September).
Connell, Richard, A New York Knight (_Saturday Evening Post_, April
21); A Friend of Napoleon (_Saturday Evening Post_, June 30); The
Unfamiliar (_Century_, September).
Dell, Floyd, Phantom Adventure (_Century_, December).
Edholm, Charles Lawrence, The Rotten Board (_Century_, November).
Edwards, Harry Stilwell, The Blue Hen’s Chicken (_Scribner’s_
October).
Faragoh, Francis Edwards, The Distant Street (_The New Pearson’s_,
March).
Folsom, Elizabeth Irons, Towers of Fame (_McClure’s_, August).
Glenn, Isa Urquhart, The Wager (_Argosy-All Story_, September 18).
Hart, Frances Noyes, Long Distance (_Pictorial Review_, March); His
Majesty’s Adviser (_McCall’s_, June).
Hopper, James, Célestine (_Collier’s_, June 2).
Hurst, Fannie, 7 Candles (_Cosmopolitan_, September).
Jackson, Charles Tenney, Water and Fire (_Short Stories_, April
10).
Johnson, Nunnally, I Owe It All to My Wife (_Smart Set_, July).
Johnston, Calvin, Clay of Ca’lina (_Saturday Evening Post_, April
7).
Kahler, Hugh MacNair, Power (_Ladies’ Home Journal_, January).
Larsson, Genevieve, Witch Mary (_Pictorial Review_, January).
Lemmon, Robert S., The Bamboo Trap (_Short Stories_, April 25).
Lincoln, Joseph, The Realist (_Ladies’ Home Journal_, July).
Mahoney, James, The Hat of Eight Reflections (_Century_, April).
Mason, Grace Sartwell, Home Brew (_Saturday Evening Post_, August
18).
Miller, Alice Duer, The Widow’s Might (_Saturday Evening_ Post,
July 14).
Montague, Margaret Prescott, The To-day, To-morrow (_Atlantic
Monthly_, August).
Morris, Gouverneur, Derrick’s Return (_Cosmopolitan_, August).
Rice, Alice Hegan, Phoebe (_Atlantic Monthly_, April).
Russell, John, The Digger (_Everybody’s_, February); Gun Metal
(_Saturday Evening Post_, June 30).
Saxby, Charles, The Song in the Desert (_McCall’s_, September).
Scoville, Samuel, The Sea King (_Ladies’ Home Journal_, January).
Singmaster, Elsie, The Truth (_Saturday Evening Post_, March 24).
Smith, Edgar Valentine, Prelude (_Harper’s_, May); Substance of
Things Hoped For (_Harper’s_, August).
Steele, Wilbur Daniel, Towers of Sand (_Pictorial Review_, June);
Ginger Beer (_Pictorial Review_, November).
Synon, Mary, Shadowed (_Red Book_, May); An Unfinished Story (_Good
Housekeeping_, November).
Tarkington, Booth, The One Hundred Dollar Bill (_McCall’s_,
January); The Coincidence (_McCall’s_, September).
Train, Arthur, Her Crowded Hour (_Saturday Evening Post_, May 19).
Vorse, Mary Heaton, The Promise (_Harper’s_, July); The Single Man
(_Century_, July).
Watts, Mary S., Nice Neighbours (_Harper’s_, December).
Wharton, Edith, False Dawn (_Ladies’ Home Journal_, November).
Whitehead, Henry S., The Intarsia Box (_Adventure_, November 10).
Williams, Ben Ames, The Piano (_Saturday Evening Post_, March 10);
A Threefold Cord (_Saturday Evening Post_, May 19).
Williams, Jesse Lynch, Not Wanted (_Saturday Evening Post_,
November 17).
Wood, Frances Gilchrist, The Courage of a Quitter (_Delineator_,
August); Four o’Clocks (_Delineator_, February); Shoes (_Harper’s_,
December).
The stories in the following list rank high with a majority of the
Committee.
Aldrich, Bess Streeter, Meadows Entertains a Celebrity (_American_,
August).
Arbuckle, Mary, Half a Loaf (_Argosy-All Story_, May 19).
Bechdolt, Frederick R., The Sureness of MacKenzie (_Sea-Stories_,
January).
Bennett, James W., The Singing Skipper (_Short Stories_, February
25).
Burt, Struthers, Pan of the Pastures (_Saturday Evening Post_,
April 7).
Clausen, Carl, A Year Longer to Live (_Metropolitan_, June).
Cohen, Octavus Roy, Swampshade (_Good Housekeeping_, May).
Condon, Frank, A Wolf is a Wolf (_Saturday Evening Post_, December
1).
Connell, Richard, Fists (_Saturday Evening Post_, March 10).
Cooper, Courtney Ryley, The Son of Beauty (_Elks Magazine_,
December).
Cross, Ruth, Mary ’Lizabeth’s Folks (_Saturday Evening Post_,
December 22).
Dean, William Harper, Under Battened Hatches (_McClure’s_, July).
De Bra, Lemuel L., The Strategy of Chun Moy (_Short Stories_, March
10).
Derfelden, Margharita, The Buddha (_Scribner’s_, August).
Dodge, Louis, The Breaking Point (_Scribner’s_, July).
Dreiser, Theodore, Ida Hauchawout (_Century_, July).
Flanner, Janet, Papa Cæsar’s Wild Oats (_Live Stories_, December
14).
Frost, Meigs O., Lilies of the Lord (_Blue Book_, October).
Gilbert, Kenneth, The Last White-Water Birler (_Short Stories_,
September 25).
Greene, Frederick Stuart, Coming Back (_Saturday Evening Post_,
October 20).
Hall, Wilbur, The Screws (_Red Book_, January).
Hellman, Sam, A Date with Hannibal (_McClure’s_, February).
Hopper, James, A Fiery Revelation (_Collier’s_, January 27).
Irwin, Wallace, A Touch of Eternity (_Red Book_, April).
Jackson, Charles Tenney, Corn (_Our World_, October).
Johnston, Julia Winifred, The Blue in the Labradorite
(_Scribner’s_, October).
Johnston, Mary, Nemesis (_Century_, May).
Josselyn, Talbert, Mocking Bird (_Short Stories_, October 25).
Kahler, Hugh MacNair, The Pinhooker (_Saturday Evening Post_, July
23).
Kerr, Sophie, Chin-Chin (_Saturday Evening Post_, May 12); Cherry
Blossoms (_McCall’s_, October).
Larsson, Genevieve, Black Eric’s Son (_Pictorial Review_,
September).
Lindsey, Myra Mason, Miss Tilly’s Yellow Streak (_Scribner’s_,
December).
Marshall, Edison, The Savage Breast (_Everybody’s_, May).
Morris, Gouverneur, The Knife (_Cosmopolitan_, September).
Mumford, Ethel Watts, Ether (_Munsey’s_, September).
Nathan, Robert, The Marriage of the Puppets (_Atlantic Monthly_,
October).
Norris, Kathleen, Christmas Bread (_Good Housekeeping_, December).
Nygren, Richard, Dead Man’s Hand (_Scribner’s_, October).
Pulver, Mary Brecht, The Black Pigeon (_Saturday Evening Post_,
November 17).
Rhodes, Harrison, Thomas Robinson, Matrimonial Agent (_Saturday
Evening Post_, April 28).
Sanborn, Ruth Burr, A Born Teacher (_Bookman_, April).
Sappington, T. L., Spring Tonic (_Everybody’s_, June).
Shannon, Robert Terry, The Scourge (_Short Stories_, November 25).
Singmaster, Elsie, The Messenger (_Saturday Evening Post_, June 2);
Brother (_Outlook_, March 7).
Smith, Gordon Arthur, Triumph (_Saturday Evening Post_, January
20); Beata (_Harper’s_, October).
Springer, Fleta Campbell, The Scar (_Century_, January).
Steele, Wilbur Daniel, Arab Stuff (_Harper’s_, January).
Stone, Elinore Cowan, The Mama of Manuelito (_Century_, April).
Synon, Mary, Yucca Bloom (_McCall’s_, October).
Welles, Harriet, Old Ships (_Scribner’s_, August).
Wetjen, Albert Richard, The Iron Sea (_Collier’s_, March 31);
Minute Immensities (_Holland’s_, April).
Willoughby, Barrett, The Law of the Trap Line (_American_,
November).
Wood, Frances Gilchrist, The Pick-Up Job (_Pictorial Review_, May);
“And Hear--the Angels--Sing” (_Delineator_, December).
From the first list were selected the stories here offered. Again, out
of this smaller number three were voted the annual prizes. To “Prelude,”
by Edgar Valentine Smith, goes the first award of $500; to “A Friend of
Napoleon,” by Richard Connell, the second, of $250; to “Towers of Fame,”
by Elizabeth Irons Folsom, the special prize of $100 for the best brief
story under 3,000 words. One member wished to record a preference for
“The Distant Street” as first winner, and also urged Richard Connell’s
“A New York Knight” for second winner. With one exception, and with the
result stated, every story on the first list was considered in making
the awards. The exception is the work of Frances Gilchrist Wood. The
Committee having indicated their appreciation of its high merit, Mrs.
Wood, herself a member of the Committee, consented to a place on the
lists; but, as a matter of course, she refused to enter any one of her
stories as a candidate for the awards.
* * * * *
As magazines increase in number, good stories increase but not in equal
ratio. The reason, which will commend itself to all readers, is apparent
to any reader who has served a term in the editorial office. A story is
rejected on one of several counts: it falls below the standard of the
magazine; it is not of the type suited to the purpose and the audience
of the magazine; it comes at a time when the vaults are overstocked. If
superlatively excellent, it may overthrow both the second and third
barriers. But, let us say, it is rejected because it departs from type.
It may develop a psychological struggle, an adventure of the soul,
whereas the periodical to which it is offered prefers stories of
physical adventure. Sent back, the script may be bought subsequently by
a magazine of repute superior to the first. But make no mistake: the
editor paying most to-day has the pick of the market. He has first
chance, though he may not pick the best. He may leave ungathered a peach
of a story, because he believes his readers like apples or plums. Editor
Number Two may observe the fine fibre, the rare bloom, of the rejected
fruit and serve it up to the gustatorially discerning. So the good story
is salvaged. Stories below standard fall to publications implicitly
serving readers of lighter, cheaper fiction. The inferior story, then,
also ultimately finds an audience.[B] To read, to estimate, and to
extract the superior stories from the inferior combine in a threefold
task of increasing difficulty.
Seventy-five years ago the stream of literature flowed from England and
the European continent to America. Examine the first issue of _Harper’s
Magazine_.[C] You will find with few exceptions a collection of
reprints. Dickens’s _Household Words_, the _Dublin University Magazine_,
_Bentley’s Miscellany_, the _Ladies’ Companion_ and the London
_Athenæum_ provide two serials, a long story complete, a brief tale or
two, memoirs, comments on authors of the day--Jeffrey, Bowles,
Wordsworth, George Sand--and translations from the German, besides other
matter of irrelevance to this summary.
Lay aside Volume I of _Harper’s_, after observing that the volume
continues the practice of the first number, and take down Volume I of
_Scribner’s_. Appearing thirty-seven years later[D] and thirty-six years
before 1923, it marks the apex of this three-quarter century period. The
Table of Contents is practically all-American. There are Brander
Matthews, Joel Chandler Harris, Dean N. S. Shaler, Octave Thanet,
Margaret Crosby, Sarah Orne Jewett, Thomas Nelson Page, Harold Frederic,
H. C. Bunner, Duncan Campbell Scott, “J. S.” of Dale, Professor Adams
Sherman Hill, Arlo Bates. There are “Glimpses at the Diary of Gouverneur
Morris,” rather than “Memoirs of the Duchess of Orleans” (in the
_Harper’s_ of 1850). American periodical literature is established.
Consider, further, the situation to-day. In England you will find
leading American periodicals in the English edition; you will find in
_Hutchinson’s_, _The Strand_, _Nash’s_ (published, all, in London) for
instance, reprints of fiction first published in America by American
authors, as well as stories by English authors published simultaneously,
a little earlier, or a trifle later, in America.
“But,” asks one, “why state the obvious?” Because certain critics refuse
to recognize the obvious, insisting on the sciolism, provincialism,
poverty, and inadequacy of fiction in America. It is one thing to insist
out of deference to dreams of greater achievement; it is quite another
thing to insist out of subservience to the fashion which prompts
negation and destruction, out of an inherent inability to acknowledge
good in anything. The tentative data suggested above at least indicate
the cosmopolitan appeal of American fiction.
Turn again to the first volume of _Harper’s Magazine_. You will find one
page bearing the classic, “A Child’s Dream of a Star” (page 73); you
will find “My Novel,” by Bulwer Lytton; and “Maurice Tiernay,” by
Charles Lever. Will any magazine of June-November, 1923, carry similar
survivals to 2000 A.D.? The answer is on the knees of the gods. But
against the instances of novels of 1850, known at least to the
specialist and perhaps to others, there are anecdotes and tales of
matter and manner inferior to stories in the same magazine to-day.
Read the beginning of “Lettice Arnold” (page 13):
“Nay, my child,” said the pale, delicate, nervous woman, thus
addressed by a blooming girl whose face beamed with every promise
for future happiness, which health and cheerfulness, and eyes
filled with warm affection could give, “Nay, my child, don’t talk
so. You must not talk so. It is not to be thought of.”
Or read “Andrew Carson’s Money: A Story of Gold,” and mark the following
passage:
Mother, I have taken poison. I have sold my body to a doctor for
dissection; the money I give you is part of the price. You have
upbraided me for never making money; I have sold all I possess--my
body--and given you my money. You have told me of the stain on my
birth; I can not live and write after that; all the poetical fame
in the world would not wash away such a stain. Your bitter words,
my bitter fate, I can bear no longer; I go to the other world; God
will pardon me. Yes, yes. From the bright moon and stars this
night, there came down a voice, saying, God would take me up to
happiness amid his own bright worlds. Give my body to the men who
are waiting for it, and so let every trace of Andrew Carson vanish
from the earth.
Now read any passage in the stories here included from the same
magazine. The point to be emphasized is the generally higher standard of
present-day fiction, as the high standard of the magazine has been
uniform.
Again, the charge finds entertainment that American fiction lacks depth;
yet it flows full and deep from the head sources of all the races that
make America. Granted that within a thousand years, from some white heat
of common interest, fusion may effect a greater national literature. It
will be different from this of to-day, but it will look back--if it
looks, at all--on the Twentieth Century not as one of childish
beginnings. American writers have their origins among Anglo-Saxon scops,
Celtic bards, French trouvères, Hebrew psalmists and historians. A
patent fact, yes; but too frequently ignored by those who like to regard
American literature as infant literatures of old races are regarded.
Nationally, America may lack depth of common interest; the soil may be
“insufficiently fertilized,” as one critic says; but, racially, America
has all that her several races have ever possessed. The short story is
the exact vessel for catching and holding the various racial
characteristics.
“And because we like to be loved,” says another,[E] “we dare not touch
upon the wounds of life--the hunger, the passions, the buffets, the
defeats that purge its sordidness, gild its drabness, and actuate us to
nobler aspirations.”
By way of reply to this challenge Francis Edwards Faragoh might have
written “The Distant Street” had he not already published it. Emanuel’s
desire for undiscovered mysteries back of the yellow pools, for life
behind the flowers, by him prefigured as unattainable, symbol of the
ideal; his buffets at home, his climactic defeat through human
passion--these are of the essence of life. Emanuel’s worldly success,
built on the supremacy of the practical pull, poignantly concedes to
life the insignificance of a single unit amid an infinity of units. His
desire, which leads him--in his “unaccountable fits”--to the distant
street, maintains his ego triumphant, ultimately inviolate. The lyric
strain in this young doctor has the potency of passages in the Song of
Solomon; his ideal of duty has the greater potency of the Mosaic
tablets.
Growing out of the Swedish settlements in Wisconsin, from another
tributary race flowers “Witch Mary.” The men and women of this story,
blue-eyed and blond, among whom Black Eric represents the darker
strength of Satan, retain the fancy, the poetry, of early Scandinavian
peoples. Those peoples, more than a thousand years ago, saw etins and
elves and nickers on the sea; their terror was of those monsters, the
nipping night, and the northern wind. Of the inland country, in Miss
Larsson’s narrative, the river is still the source of fear, as was the
sea while _Beowulf_ was growing slowly to epic size. Those children who
saw Witch Mary fly, like the wind, from the river, are descended in the
fortieth generation or so from those children who followed the flight of
Grendel’s mother to her lair under the waters of the haunted mere.
“Prelude” pictures without ruth the dominant Anglo-Saxon in decay. But
in Selina Jo, the humble fighter whose perseverance and patience land
her in the reformatory of her desire, it hints at resurrection out of
dust. Stock of the past, impoverished, dry as Phœnix ashes, yet may
renew itself, like the fabled bird, for another thousand years. Heritage
of the South, the poor white has been loosely accepted as drift left by
flood and ebb of a splendid civilization. Only in recent years have
writers come out of the South who treat him in the individual manner he
deserves. Mr. Smith has done so with originality, true democracy, and
thorough understanding. Selina Jo he has made a living girl, typical of
her social stratum, seemingly typical in her departure from it. Hope
lies in just this seeming divergence, which is in reality the survival
of warrior blood second to none the earth has ever produced.
Though perhaps not apparent to the reader, “The Wager” represents in its
authorship one who carries on the traditions of the feudal South. Those
who have been longest in these states are first to scatter to other
corners of the world in foreign service, in far-flung naval exploits,
and in military outposts. If a considerable percentage of American
fiction uses foreign settings, the conclusion must not be falsely drawn,
“We have nothing at home to write about, it would appear,” but rather
“Most at home in America, most at home abroad.” Isa Urquhart Glenn, in
employing the scenes she knew while her husband saw service in the
Philippines, only makes use of what for her was immediately at hand.
Surely there lie in this tale feeling for race and compassion for the
weak--hallmarks of _noblesse oblige_.
“Shadowed,” by Mary Synon, climactically presents the few hours which
mark the climax of a political career. At the moment Stroude is about to
be nominated for the presidency of the United States, he receives a
letter from a dying woman. The significance of this letter lies in the
facts that he loved her, that she had released him to climb a mountain
higher than Pisgah, and that he had promised to return to her if she
ever needed him. His struggle must be brief, since he must either accept
the nomination without seeing the woman or must see her at the cost of
losing the highest honour in the land. His code of honour has never
faltered in the years he has smiled at the devious ways of politicians
and kept his integrity, nor does it falter now. He goes back to Pisgah.
If this eventuality is criticized as the one less likely to occur in
real life, yet it has the merit of seeming true in the life of fiction.
And every reader will admit the essential truth of the ideal. The
author, herself of the Middle West, has paid tribute to the Southern
mountaineer.
“The Bamboo Trap” illustrates the struggle of the American scientist far
afield. John Mather’s adventure in the Andes, wherein his problem is to
escape from a hole in the mountain side is enlivened by spiders. He
escapes through a gallant physical fight. It is impossible to resist
reference to a suggestion made by a reader of this story, a reader who
is avowedly of the camp preferring Russian to American fiction. This
tale would be more life-like, he said, if it ended on the unfinished
struggle. “Why have that flood tear down the remaining barrier?
Accident, wasn’t it?” But if Mather had not very nearly destroyed the
barrier, accident would have availed him nothing. An Oriental in that
trap doubtless would have concluded, “If I am fated to die I shall die.”
Therein is exemplified the difference between the philosophy in
literature of the negative and philosophy in literature of the positive.
Life in America is not torpid, sick, neurasthenic, if one agrees with
Theodore Dreiser, as he expressed himself in a recent interview.[F]
“What I am driving at is the fact that the portrayal of American life
does not lend itself to Russian atmosphere, to a Dostoyefsky plot, to
Gorki treatment.” Mather’s escape is not so much the ingenious end to a
clever plot as it is the logical end of just such a situation in real
life, provided the chief actor be American and not Russian. The fighter
may escape, the weakling dies. If the ideal of a people be annihilation,
death the easy surrender either to indifference or to a divine
nostalgia, just so surely literature will reflect that ideal. Not before
America as a nation embraces pessimism will its literature be affected
seriously by the literature of pessimism. And, incidentally, it will be
worth while watching the literature of New Russia for a change of
ideals.
According to recent statistics, Paris has replaced Chicago as literary
centre of the United States, perhaps the first important result, to
letters, of the World War. Richard Connell humorously records an
instance of the days when “Ichabod” appeared on the lintel of waxworks
palaces. Where is now the Eden Musée? Who goes to Madame Tussaud’s? They
had their day, those creations of horror; melodramatically, they held
their puppet moments on the stage. But those moments are fled, and what
is out of date serves the humourist. Papa Chibou’s affection for the
cauliflower-eared dummy and his ignorance of the real Napoleon combine
incongruously enough, and with the love theme, to a high hilarity. Yet
the story is beyond farce. More than one will feel his eyes moist at the
end, and nobody drops a tear over farce unless from extravagance of
laughter. Mr. Connell’s ability in creating characters over whom and
with whom one laughs happily associates itself with acumen in searching
out ridiculous situations. His humour recommends itself further as of
that highly human order bordering pathos. Read, for example, “The
Unfamiliar,” listed above, and receive proof of this statement.
The author of “Célestine,” born in France, has balanced Mr. Connell’s
study of Papa Chibou by his interpretation of the peasant girl. Like
Bertha, of Fannie Hurst’s “Lummox,” Célestine feels beauty but remains
inexpressive; she is dull and speechless. Like Bertha, she is vaguely
aware of harmonies; the majesty of war shakes her soul. Inarticulate
love merges into dumb renunciation; the mute expression of her adoration
lies in cleaning boots; of her sorrow, in unspoken prayer by the
semblance of a tomb.
Around Paris of the Boul’ Miche’ many stories have centred. In a bubble
of mirth James Mahoney adds another to the list: “The Hat of Eight
Reflections.” The reflections are no less the highlights of the story
than of the hat. Max Beerbohm once concluded, after ample proof by
illustration, that the public finds humour either in delight over
suffering or in contempt of the unfamiliar.[G] Such a public would
hardly find humour in “The Hat,” which the Committee recommend for
laughter prompted by the high-handed proceedings of Ventrillon, his wit,
his ability to paint like the Devil, his catastrophic destruction of Hat
Number Two. If he seems funny in walking hungry from his lunch, yet we
well know he has been stuffing himself on Belletaille’s little cakes.
And if Belletaille is subject for laughter, well, her personality stands
the strain and exonerates the reader from the charge of cruelty in
enjoyment at her expense. That enjoyment is modified by admiration.
Typical of the American scene and of American life are “Nice
Neighbours,” “The One Hundred Dollar Bill,” “Towers of Fame,” “Not
Wanted.” To these should be added Mrs. Wharton’s “False Dawn,” of the
first list. Though in length outside the short story limit,
nevertheless, it should receive mention as a notable piece of brief
fiction. Failure to record appreciation of its exquisite charm would
argue the Committee dull to beauty of theme and workmanship.
“Nice Neighbours,” a vigorous story dramatically presented, conveys a
pleasantly satiric theme which every reader may state for himself. Mary
S. Watts has accomplished her satire the more admirably in that she does
so without the aid of caricature. Her characters, from the imps of Satan
who killed their pets for the gruesome pleasure of it, to the nice old
maid who rented her house--all walk out of life, distorted by not even
so much as the temperament of the author which, justifiably, might have
exaggerated lines and heightened colour.
Mr. Tarkington’s “The One Hundred Dollar Bill” so skilfully conceals its
idea as to betray the unwary into seeing merely a light story, whereas
it epitomizes the American character. Behold the American: Caution and
thrift refuse the purchase of a toy yet retreat before the gambler’s
spirit. Loss at the gaming table retrieves itself through that
adaptability which leads on alike to failure or fortune. In the opinion
of many readers who have enjoyed all this author’s stories, from “In the
Arena” to the present, nothing he has written is stronger and at once
more subtle than “The One Hundred Dollar Bill.” If there is such a thing
as a composite American, he is represented by Collinson.
Eric Hall, of Mrs. Folsom’s “Towers of Fame,” is the counterpart of
Emanuel in “The Distant Street.” Eric meets the one woman, who might
have remained lost. So great is this possibility as to form the basis
for surprise. We finish the story: Eric left the girl. Add a final
hundred words or so and demolish the first dénouement. The new ending is
as just as the old. The adherent of the negative and the incomplete
says, “Eric went away, of course. And he never came back.” Quite right,
if Eric was that sort of man. But the partisan of the positive may
reply, “Why didn’t he go back? It was just that return which reveals his
character.” He is the older American; Emanuel is the newcomer.
“Not Wanted” exemplifies the age-old struggle of the generations to
understand each other. Of all the fathers who have enjoyed it, either in
the _Post_ or in the little volume published by Charles Scribner’s Sons,
not one but has admired Mr. Williams’s skill in erecting barriers
between father and son, then with equal skill removing them. Over this
story perhaps more enthusiasm has been expressed to the Committee than
over any other selected. If critics who see in it only another instance
of the machine-made story will take a hint from general approval they
will conclude that emotion, though intolerant of formula, yet makes
universal appeal through perfection of form. “Not Wanted” will live in
younger companionship with this author’s famous “The Stolen Story.”
At once a criticism and a half dozen stories rolled up in one parcel,
“Home Brew” doubly succeeds and gives double measure. Grandmother’s
selfishness, Father and Walter’s extraordinary friendship, Mother’s
home-making gift, Aunt Jude’s quiet struggle--quiet as volcanic fires
beneath the crust--Eddie’s love for the sea, and Mildred’s fluttering
toward the flame: in all these lies potential drama. Three themes
actually achieve the outline of drama and reach climax on the evening
Alyse spends with her mother. Alyse, blind to all these potentialities,
becomes the target for Miss Mason’s arrow-thrusts which, in piercing
her, pierce the average would-be writer. The dilettante sees neither the
humour nor the tragedy of real life, whose repressions mean to her only
absence of thought and emotion. No other country owns to so many
thousands of those who, mistaking desire for ability, and possessing the
minimum requirements of the fictionist, waste themselves in “trying to
write.” Miss Mason’s Alyse should be set before these thousands, and the
Committee are grateful for the opportunity of passing her along.
If “Home Brew” is a criticism, no less is “Phantom Adventure” a
revelation. Like Kipling’s “The Brushwood Boy” and “They,” it evokes
from the realm of fancy a beautiful dream. Floyd Dell has educed an
ectopolasm which, emerging from the material banker, magically forms an
exquisite spirit picture. Plangently sombre the rhythmic cadences of
this verbal harmony fall on the ear, drowning alien sounds, luring into
unexplored recesses of the mystic and the subconscious. Restraint and
reserve potently influence the reader to guess at tracts of the spirit
still to be explored. The art of suggestion is here at its height; for
though the expressed story is clear and whole, that which is unexpressed
permits individual interpretation and so intensifies the clarity and
unity for different minds in different ways.
“Derrick’s Return,” an adventure of the spirit unhampered by the body,
illustrates in rollicking yet serious vein a philosophy of heaven and
hell. The author’s concept of dimensions in time and place after death
should be compared with that of May Sinclair in the final one of her
“Uncanny Stories.” It was to be expected that Einstein’s theories of
relativity would find ultimate translation into fiction, but hardly that
resultant or similar theories would so instantly express themselves. Mr.
Morris, as is true of Miss Sinclair, has so long since become master of
telling a story in the large as to insure free play for finer thought
processes, processes which distinguish the result as that of a unique
personality. So in “Derrick’s Return” these thought radiations penetrate
the confines of infinity and, charged with messages of the absolute,
return to electrify and to entertain.
* * * * *
In this Introduction, the Chairman has indicated, without attempt at
discussion, the wide range of present-day American short stories and the
consequent labour in reading them all; their cosmopolitan
characteristics, and their superiority in the average over stories of a
generation ago. Further, the current of American fiction bears on its
bosom the heritage of all the racial streams which have united to form
it. Again, the American concept of life demands a completeness of
struggle and sense of form associated with an underlying philosophy, not
negative and pessimistic, but positive and optimistic.
To you who read, aware of the significant contribution American
brief fiction adds to world entertainment and world literature, yet
have not time to acquaint yourselves with the yearly thousands of
short stories: gathering these covers full of the representative
best is one reward of the Committee. Another reward is that of
insuring comparatively permanent form to the group. Still a third
reward lies in the bestowal of the annual prizes. These awards, the
Treasurer of the Society, Mr. Melvin C. Hascall, states in a letter
to the Chairman of this Committee, the Society expects to increase
for the year 1924.
For 1923, the Committee of Award consisted of:
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, Chairman
ETHEL WATTS MUMFORD
FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD, Litt. D.
GROVE WILSON
WILLIAM GRIFFITH
The Committee of Administration:
MELVIN C. HASCALL, Treasurer Society Arts and Sciences
GEORGE C. HOWARD, Attorney
GLENN FRANK, Editor of the _Century_.
As before, the Committee are grateful to editors, readers and authors
without whose coöperation this annual volume would be impossible.
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS.
_New York City,
January, 1924._
_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1923_
PRELUDE
BY EDGAR VALENTINE SMITH
From _Harper’s_
When she was fifteen years old Selina Jo was doing a man’s work in
Pruitt’s turpentine orchard; properly, though, her story begins earlier
than this.
It was shortly before his daughter was born that Shug Hudsill brought
his young wife, Marthy, to a sandy land homestead--twenty-five miles
from the nearest railroad--in that section of the country which borders
the Gulf of Mexico. There followed shortly the inevitable log-rolling,
at which the neighbours--mostly Hudsills themselves--contributed their
labour. Shug furnished refreshments in the form of “shinny,” an
unpalatable, but unusually potent, native rum. Otherwise, his part in
the erection of his future home was largely advisory. Despite this,
though, the house, a two-room cabin of the “saddle-bag” type, was soon
erected. Hand-split pine boards covered the roof and gave fair promise
of keeping out the rain. An unglazed window and a door in each room,
which would be closed with rough wooden shutters during inclement
weather, served for ventilation and lighting. A stick-and-clay chimney
at one end of the cabin gave outlet to the single fireplace which was to
answer the dual purpose of cooking and heating.
By devious methods Shug accumulated two or three runty, tick-infested
cows and a few razorback hogs. These were left, in the main, to shift
for themselves. There were tough native grasses available and the
canebrakes in Shoalwater River were close by. During severe weather such
of the cows as chanced to be giving a few pints of thin, watery milk
daily were fed a little home-grown fodder and corn on the ear. With
proboscides inordinately sharpened for the purpose, the hogs probed for
succulent roots in the rank undergrowth of the nearby swamp. When
hog-killing season arrived Shug would shoulder his gun and slouch away
for his winter’s supply of meat. Neighbours charged it against him that
he was not always careful to see to it that they were his own shotes
which he killed. Since it was a simple matter, though, to snip off the
telltale ear markings of a dead pig, his pilferings, if a fact, were
never proved.
Corn sprouted slowly in the thin soil; it grew up dispiritedly and came
to maturity stunted as to blade, stalk, and ear. Sweet potatoes yielded
generously in new ground; each year a fresh plot was cleared, broken,
and planted to these. A patch of sugar cane was always grown for
molasses; a portion of this, it was generally conceded, was finally made
into “shinny,” since Shug was known to be an adept at its manufacture.
Certain it is that he made frequent extended trips away from home with
his wagon and yoke of oxen, never troubling to explain the reason for
his absence.
It was amid these surroundings, sufficient in themselves, one would have
said, to hinder physical, mental, and moral growth, that the girl Selina
Jo was born. The occasion was in no sense of the word an event with Shug
and Marthy. Since all married people of their acquaintance had children,
the baby simply represented, to them, the inevitable. With the birth of
the child, though, Marthy became barren.
For the first eighteen months of her existence the baby crawled about
the cabin unnamed. Then it occurred to Marthy that their offspring ought
to be christened.
“Shug,” she suggested casually, “seems to me we ort to be namin’ that
air young ’un.”
Shug, lolling in the shade of a water oak, shifted his quid and spat
disinterestedly. “I ain’t objectin’ none,” he replied.
“How ’bout callin’ her ‘S’liny Jo’?” Marthy asked.
“Fittin’ enough name fer her, I reckin,” Shug yawned.
As the child grew up she came to accept her parents as they had long
since accepted her--merely as a bald fact. There was never the slightest
evidence of parental affection upon the one side or of filial attachment
upon the other.
Once Marthy came upon Shug whipping the girl with a switch.
“What you whippin’ her fer?” she asked. Her tone was one of simple
curiosity, nothing else.
“All young ’uns needs it,” Shug replied virtuously, as he tossed the
switch aside. “Hadn’t been my daddy usetah whale me powerful, I wouldn’t
a been nigh the man I am now; not nigh.”
It was a matter for remark between the parents that, even at a tender
age, Selina Jo rarely emitted any outcry under punishment. There burned
in her sloe-black eyes, though, the flame of an emotion which she
checked upon the surface.
One would have expected the girl to respond to the influence of
heredity. Her parents, the cattle, the hogs, even the crops about her
were stunted, half-starved in appearance. By contrast, Selina Jo, upon a
daily ration made up almost exclusively of corn pone, molasses, and
home-cured pork as salt as ocean brine, defied all known dietary laws,
and flourished amazingly. She was precocious, too. When she was only
seven years old she could swear just as well--rather, just as
wickedly--as could Shug himself. She learned early, though, that, as a
source of information, her parents were practically _nil_. Thenceforth,
the questions that had rushed to her lips were succeeded by a look of
eternal interrogation in her sombre eyes.
It was shortly after her twelfth birthday that a young
school-teacher--the only one the community ever knew--came into the
Hudsill settlement. Selina Jo was grudgingly allowed to attend the
school. For six months the young man’s enthusiasm held out. Then it
waned and died. Few of the older people could either read or write, and
the opinion among them seemed to be universal that what was good enough
for them was good enough for their offspring. But before the school
closed Selina Jo had learned the alphabet and a portion of the
old-fashioned first reader.
She missed the school, and she always kept, close at hand, her thumbed
and dog-eared book, the only one that she possessed. The school-teacher
had lighted the fires of ambition within her. She came to be troubled by
the realization that her mental development was lagging behind her
physical growth.
“S’liny Jo,” she informed herself one day in a fit of musing, “you air
as p’izen strong as a gallon o’ green shinny, but you don’t know
skercely nothin’.” A moment later she added dejectedly: “Ner ain’t got
no chanchet o’ learnin’, neether; not nary par-tick-le of a chancet!”
Shoalwater River afforded her chief means of diversion. She never
remembered when or how she learned to swim. Every day that the weather
permitted she enjoyed a plunge in the river. Soon she noticed that no
less pleasant than the contact of the water with her naked body was the
comfortable after-feeling of cleanliness. Following this, came a feeling
of repugnance toward her shiftless and slovenly parents.
She had long since begun to assist with the crops. With the manure
scraped from the cow lot she made the beds for the potatoes. At planting
time she pulled the slips and set them out. She hoed the sugar cane and
thinned the corn. During harvest she did almost as much work as Shug and
Marthy combined.
Before she was fourteen she had broken a pair of young steers to the
yoke. She split the rails and laid the fence for a new potato patch.
Using for the purpose the young oxen which she had broken, she prepared
the ground for planting. She was as tall as her father now, a slender,
wiry creature, her symmetrical young body as free from blemish as the
trunk of a healthy pine tree.
A vague unrest troubled her at times, though. Something occurred one day
which intensified this. In a corner of the cabin she found a
dust-covered photograph. Brushing it off, she gazed upon a face that was
unfamiliar. She took the picture to Marthy.
“Maw,” she asked, “who is this?”
Her mother glanced at it indifferently. “Me,” she answered listlessly.
“_You?_” Selina Jo gasped.
“Yeah. Ruther, it usetah be. Tuck when I married yore paw.”
Selina Jo scanned the comely pictured face for some likeness to the
slatternly creature who had given her birth. Wild resentment against
something--she scarcely knew what--flamed in her heart. Suddenly she
dashed the photograph to the floor and hurried from the cabin. As one
reads the chronicle of her words, it must be remembered that her
vocabulary was patterned after that of her father.
“Oh, Goddlemighty!” she burst out tempestuously, “I don’t want to be
like her! I ain’t goin’ to, neither!”
Her acquaintances were limited to the score of families, most of them
relatives, and all of them mental and moral replicas of her own, who
lived near by. There was an almost abandoned church in the neighbourhood
where, at rare intervals, some itinerant preacher held services. Upon
one occasion, though, Shug took the family to preaching in what was
known as the Briggs settlement which was ten miles nearer the railroad.
It was here that Selina Jo had it impressed upon her young mind just how
people of her stripe were looked upon by those cast in another mould.
Shortly after they had seated themselves in the church, Shug, uncouth
and unshaven on the men’s side, and she and her mother on that reserved
for her sex, Selina Jo heard one of the women whisper to her neighbour:
“Some o’ that Hudsill tribe!”
As the girl caught the slur in the words her face flushed darkly. She
began to notice the unfavourable looks with which the men of the
congregation were regarding her father. Even the children stared
superciliously toward her mother and herself. Puzzled, vaguely hurt, at
first she wondered why.
Lingering just outside the church at the close of services, she waited,
shyly hopeful that some one would speak to her. No one paid her the
slightest heed. In a land where a lack of hospitality was the one
unpardonable sin, this alone was enough to convince her that something
was terribly wrong somewhere. But she held her peace until they had
completed the tedious homeward journey.
“Maw,” she demanded abruptly, as soon as they were alone, “how come we
ain’t like other folks?”
“What air you talkin’ about?” Marthy intoned querulously.
“Them folks in that air Briggs settlement.”
“Wa’l?”
“They looked slanchwise at Paw when we went in an’ set down.” Selina Jo
waited a moment, her face clouding at the thought. “An’ them li’l’ old
gals looked slanchwise at me, too. Durn ’em!”
“How kin I he’p the way they looked at us?” Marthy whined. “Treatin’ us
thatta way just ’cause we air pore.”
“’Tweren’t that, neither,” the girl insisted stubbornly. “Them men--most
of ’em--was wearin’ overhalls. The school-teacher said rich folks don’t
wear them kind o’ clo’es to meetin’.”
“Tryin’ to git better ’n yore raisin’, air you?” Marthy suddenly showed
unwonted spirit. “Wa’l, gal, you kin just make up yore mind to be like
yore pore maw an’----”
“I ain’t goin’ to be like you!” The words shot out with sudden passion.
“I ain’t!”
“God ha’ mercy!” Marthy’s usually expressionless face showed a trace of
surprise at this outburst. “But I’ve allus said seein’ lots o’ things
gits notions inta young ’uns’ heads what ain’t good fer ’em.”
“Ner that ain’t all I seed, neither,” Selina Jo retorted. “They didn’t
none o’ them folks--not nary one o’ ’em--ast us home to eat a Sunday
dinner with ’em.”
At the conclusion of the church service she had seen invitations to the
noonday meal being extended and accepted right and left by the Briggs
settlement householders. Since it was the custom to include the veriest
stranger in these, the fact that none had been offered her people left
room for only one conclusion: the Hudsills were looked upon by their
neighbours as being unworthy to receive one. Slowly the impression
fastened itself upon her brain that her family was hopelessly low in the
social scale--“poison low-down,” she would have phrased it. This
conviction gripped her. It stung--and it stayed with her.