Short Stories of the New America Part 1

Short Stories of the New America.

by Various.

PREFACE

The purpose of this book of short stories of modern American life is twofold.

First, these narratives give an interpretation of certain great forces and movements in the life of this age. All the authors represented are especially qualified to describe with force and feeling some phase of contemporary life.

Thinking people everywhere realize that it is not enough to place before the pupils in the schools the bare facts in regard to community and national life. The heart must be warmed, the feelings must be stirred, before the will can be aroused to n.o.ble action in any great movement.

President Wilson has urged school officers to increase materially the time and attention devoted to instruction bearing directly upon the problems of community and national life. This was not a plea for the temporary enlargement of the school programme, appropriate merely to the period of the war, but a plea for the realization in public education of the new emphasis which the war has given to the ideals of democracy.

The first aim of this book, then, is to help to place clearly before young people the ideals of America through the medium of literature that will grip the attention and quicken the will to action.

Second, librarians have stated that there are very few compilations of modern short stories of interest and significance with which to meet the needs of young people who turn to the libraries for help in reading.

It is hoped that this book may be of real value in the schools, by clothing the dry bones of civics with significant and interesting material, and that it may also supply a need of the libraries and the homes for a book of live and valuable short stories.

SOMETHING ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND THE STORIES

Dorothy Canfield (Dorothea Frances Canfield Fisher), the author of _Home Fires in France_ from which "A Little Kansas Leaven" was taken, is one of the most convincing and brilliant writers of the times. She always writes with a purpose, but as all of her work is characterized by originality, clearness, and the vital quality of human sympathy, there is not a dull line in any of her fiction or her educational writings.

_Home Fires in France_ is a truthful record of Mrs. Fisher's impressions of life in tragic, devastated France during the Great War. During much of this period the author was working for the relief of those made blind by war. The tremendous appeal to America made by this book testifies to the sincerity and the genius of the author.

Dorothy Canfield was born in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1879. She obtained degrees from Ohio State University and from Columbia and studied and traveled abroad extensively, becoming an accomplished linguist. She is the author, under the name of Dorothy Canfield, of some of the most brilliant fiction of the day, _The Squirrel-Cage_, _The Bent Twig_, and other novels, and under her married name, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, of some valuable educational works, _The Montessori Mother_, _Mothers and Children_, and other books of progressive ideas in education. Mrs.

Fisher is now in France (1918) carrying on her work of mercy for the French soldiers and their families.

Elsie Singmaster (Mrs. Harold Lewars) lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and has written most entertaining stories of that historic region and also of the life of the descendants of the Dutch settlers of Pennsylvania. Among her many stories are _When Sarah Saved the Day_, _The Christmas Angel_, _The Flag of Eliphalet_, and _Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath_. This author is a frequent contributor to magazines. In _The Survivors_ we watch the conflict in the breast of stubborn old Adam Foust and rejoice with tears in our eyes when in the time of his friend's need, love conquers, and Adam and Henry march arm-in-arm down the village street. The story is told with the realism and beauty that characterize all of this author's work, much of which describes the everyday happenings of commonplace people with absolute fidelity.

Albert Payson Terhune (1872- ) wrote his first book in collaboration with his distinguished mother, "Marion Harland," a well-known name in American homes. Mr. Terhune has written both novels and short stories and is especially successful in the latter form. Among his best stories are _Caritas_, _Night of_ _the Dub_, _Quiet_, and _The Wildcat_. In _The Wildcat_ we watch with deepest interest the actions of a Southern mountaineer, who, torn from his backwoods home by the draft, was forced to adopt habits and manners and to submit to a discipline to which he was utterly foreign. The mental gropings of this young American and the manner in which he found his soul and his country make a fascinating story.

James Francis Dwyer is an Australian by birth. Mr. Dwyer has traveled extensively as a newspaper correspondent in Australia, the South Seas, and South Africa. He came to America in 1907. He is the author of _The White Waterfall_, _The Bust of Lincoln_, _The Spotted Panther_, _Breath of the Jungle_, and _Land of the Pilgrim's Pride_.

In _The Citizen_ we have a beautiful picture of the vision of freedom that came to Big Ivan in downtrodden Russia, and we see him and the gentle Anna as they follow the beckoning finger of hope across Europe and the broad ocean until, in the words of Ivan, they found a home in a land "where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the blood."

Grace Coolidge is the wife of an Arapahoe Indian and has spent many years upon the Indian Reservations. She has told of her observations during these years in a charming little volume called _Teepee Neighbors_. We feel that the stories are true and they are filled with the pathos of life in the Reservations.

Arthur Stanwood Pier is a distinguished writer of stories for young people and since 1896 one of the editors of _The Youth's Companion_.

Among Mr. Pier's books are _The Boys of St. Timothy_, _The Jester of St.

Timothy_, _Grannis of the Fifth_, _Jerry_, _The Plattsburgers_, _The Pedagogues_, and _The Women We Marry_. In _A Night Attack_ we are given a vivid picture of the life of the soldier in training and of the sympathetic relations of officers and men.

Mary Brecht Pulver has in _The Path of Glory_ written one of the finest stories of the war. The manner in which a poor and humble family of mountaineers secured distinction and very real happiness, though it was tinged with sadness, makes a story of gripping interest and one that cannot fail to make every reader kinder and more humane in his intercourse with those less favored than himself.

Fisher Ames, Jr., is a well-known author of stories for boys. Mr. Ames has been appointed the official historian of the Red Cross Society and has gone to Europe (1918) as a commissioned officer in the United States Army.

In _Sergt. Warren Comes Back from France_ the author makes us see very clearly the heroic figure of the blind soldier, and we realize that under the spell of such a personality the voters would unanimously decide to spend their money in France and relinquish the idea of making their town more beautiful. In the words of one of the villagers, "Sergt.

Warren can see straight even if he is blind," and the crowd will always respond to such leaders.h.i.+p.

Arthur Guy Empey is an American and a soldier of the Great War, who after a life at the Front in which he did all that a brave man can do for the cause of humanity and survive, has written of some of his adventures in _Over the Top_, one of the best-known books of the war. In the chapter which we have called "The Coward" he shows the splendid regeneration of a despicable man.

The "hero" in this story is an Englishman, as Mr. Empey fought in the British army before America entered the war, but the phase of human nature portrayed in "The Coward" must have been observable in all the belligerent armies.

The cowardice of the few, however, was entirely concealed and atoned for by the splendid bravery of the many, and considerable numbers of men, who, when drafted, might have been designated as cowards, are leaving the army with a record of brave action in times of great danger.

Frederick Orin Bartlett, the author of _Chateau Thierry_, was born in Haverhill, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1876 and was educated in the public schools of that city, in a private school abroad, at Procter Academy, Andover, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and at Harvard. He has been connected with several Boston newspapers and is a well-known writer of short stories.

In _Chateau Thierry_ he has portrayed very clearly a certain type of easy-going, prosperous American,-the American who was aroused to the knowledge of higher ideals and to the exigencies of a world at war by the shock and the thrill that followed upon the active partic.i.p.ation of the American forces in the great conflict.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due to the following authors and publishers for permission to use the selections contained in this book:

Henry Holt and Company and Mrs. Dorothy Canfield (Fisher) for "A Little Kansas Leaven" from _Home Fires in France_. (Copyright, 1918, by Henry Holt and Company.)

The Outlook Company and Elsie Singmaster Lewars for "The Survivors."

(Copyright, 1915, by The Outlook Company; copyright, 1916, by Elsie Singmaster Lewars.)

Mr. Albert Payson Terhune for "The Wild Cat." (Copyright, 1918, by The Curtis Publis.h.i.+ng Company.)

P. F. Collier and Son and James Francis Dwyer for "The Citizen."