The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 66

_Hindu Fairy Tales_, by _Florence Griswold_ (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.). These fairy tales retold for children from the "Jataka" are narrated in a simple style which is unpretentious but effective. The legends upon which they are based are among the oldest of the human race, but they retain much of their freshness in this version.

_Uncle Remus Returns_, by _Joel Chandler Harris_ (Houghton, Mifflin Co.). This volume falls into two parts. It includes six new folk stories by Uncle Remus as told to the son of the little boy who was the eager listener in the earlier volumes. These stories rank with the best of their predecessors. To these have been added five sketches from newspaper files, which are purely ephemeral.

_The Ransom of Red Chief and Other Stories_, by _O. Henry_, as chosen for boys by _Franklin K. Mathiews_ (Doubleday, Page & Co.). It was a happy thought which inspired Mr. Mathiews to make his selection. In it the reader will find many old favorites well balanced by less familiar stories. Mr. Mathiews knew well that no coaxing was necessary to introduce these stories to boys, and has wisely dispensed with any educational apparatus.

_Gold and Iron_, by _Joseph Hergesheimer_ (Alfred A. Knopf). In these three careful studies in time and place Mr. Hergesheimer has sought to reproduce certain aspects of our American tradition. With a meticulous attention to detail, and a keen eye for salient incident, he has slowly built up three portraits which rank with the best that American fiction has given us in the past few years. The comparison with Mr. Galsworthy is an obvious one, but emphasizes a difference rather than a resemblance. There is a certain asceticism of color and emotion in these novelettes alien to Mr. Galsworthy's romantic temperament.

_Long Ever Ago_, by _Rupert Hughes_ (Harper & Brothers). During the past few years I have had frequent occasion to comment upon these admirable studies of Irish American life as they first appeared in the magazines.

I regard them as the definitive chronicle of the first Irish American generation in its process of a.s.similation by New York. But it is more than this, for it is a series of richly humorous little dramas, with an inimitable flavor of their own.

_Tales From a Famished Land_, by _Edward Eyre Hunt_ (Doubleday, Page & Co.). Mr. Hunt has been a prominent official of the American Relief Commission in Belgium, and these poignant stories, continuing as they do the record of Mr. Hunt's earlier book, "War Bread," are largely based on actual happenings. But the author has looked upon events with the imaginative eye of a born story writer, and it is hard to forget such finely wrought pictures as "Ghosts" and "Saint Dympna's Miracle."

_Gaslight Sonatas_, by _Fannie Hurst_ (Harper & Brothers). I have expressed my opinion so frequently as to the permanent human values of Miss Hurst's work that I can only remark here that "Gaslight Sonatas" is one of the very few permanent short story books. Of the seven stories in the volume two have been previously published in volumes of this annual.

_Abraham's Bosom_, by _Basil King_ (Harper & Brothers). This short story, now republished in book form from the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, is an imaginative rendering of spiritual experience independent of sensory phenomena. Its effectiveness is due to its direct sense of reality and incisive characterization.

_Modern Short Stories_: _A Book for High Schools_, Edited with Introduction and Notes by _Frederick Houk Law_ (Century Company). This collection of twenty-two stories drawn entirely from contemporary work is a most persuasive introduction of the short story to young readers.

The selection is catholic, and should make the student familiar with many types of plot, characterization and style. The selection ranges from Lafcadio Hearn to Tolstoy, and from Richard Harding Davis to Fiona Macleod. Such notable stories of the past year or two as Phyllis Bottome's "Brother Leo" and Stacy Aumonier's "A Source of Irritation"

afford a refres.h.i.+ng change from the conventional routine. Mr. Law has succeeded almost admirably in coating the educational pill.

_The Land Where the Sunsets Go_, by _Orville H. Leonard_ (Sherman, French & Company). This volume was published in 1917 somewhat obscurely, but it has certain remarkable qualities which would make me sorry to neglect it. These sketches of the American desert are divided somewhat evenly between verse and prose. The verse is very bad, and the prose is very good. While the prose sketches are not short stories in the strict sense of the word, they contain much fine characterization and a pictorial value which place them easily first among all imaginative records of the American desert.

_The Red One_, by _Jack London_ (The Macmillan Company). These four short stories include the best of the work upon which Mr. London was engaged at the time of his death. "Like Argus of the Ancient Times" is a true saga full of the open s.p.a.ces and the zest of youth lingering on into old age. "The Hussy" also takes its place among the best of Mr.

London's later stories. While the other stories are distinctive I cannot report upon them so favorably.

_Canadian Wonder Tales_, by _Cyrus Macmillan_ (John Lane Company). These stories are drawn from all parts of Canada and include both Indian and French Canadian legends. While they lack the nave reality of the folk storyteller's method, the selection is excellent, and should prove a revelation to the American reader of the rich, though neglected, treasures which lie at our back door. Until Mr. C. M. Barbeau of Ottawa renders his invaluable collections accessible in more popular form, this collection will be practically the only introduction of these treasures to the general reader.

_Famous Ghost Stories_, edited by _J. Walker McSpadden_ (The Thomas Y.

Crowell Company). This selection follows more conventional lines than that of Mr. French, which I spoke of above, but it contains Defoe's "True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal," which is perhaps the best ghost story ever written, and which has the advantage of relative unfamiliarity. The other thirteen stories are by Sir Walter Scott, Mrs.

Gaskell, Bulwer-Lytton, H. B. Marryat, Fitz-James...o...b..ien, Hawthorne, Irving, Poe, Kipling, and d.i.c.kens. The publisher should be congratulated on the best piece of bookmaking of the year.

_E. K. Means_ (G. P. Putnam's Sons). This book is so good that it needs no t.i.tle, but raises the question as to what its successor will be called. It is a series of negro farces in narrative form chronicling the joys and tribulations of Vinegar Atts, Figger Bush, Pap Curtain, Hitch Diamond and other Louisiana negroes. The town of Tickfall will have its pilgrims some day if this book finds the audience it so richly deserves.

_Shandygaff_, by _Christopher Morley_ (Doubleday, Page & Co.). Mr.

Morley says that this book contains short stories and I will leave to the reader the delightful task of hunting them. Meanwhile I beg the question and step aside after introducing the reader to good discourse on many subjects by a man who knows how to talk.

_Uncle Abner_, by _Melville Davisson Post_ (D. Appleton and Company).

Few writers have so conscientious a technique as Mr. Post, or such a fine sense of plot. This collection of mystery stories is woven around the personality of Uncle Abner, whose Greek sense of justice is inflexible. All of these stories are masterly examples of the justifiable surprise ending, yet have the logic and dramatic power which we have come to a.s.sociate with Athenian tragedy. Their effectiveness is largely due to the value of under statement.

_Sketches in Duneland_, by _Earl H. Reed_ (John Lane Company). These studies of the dune country of Lake Michigan fall into two groups. The second and larger group consists of character studies drawn from the quaint denizens of this district with skilful humor and fine characterization. "Holy Zeke," "The Love Affair of Happy Cal," and "The Resurrection of Bill Saunders" are the best stories in this collection, though the whole is very good indeed.

_Miss Mink's Soldier_, by _Alice Hegan Rice_ (Century Company). This is a pleasant collection of Mrs. Rice's better short stories. They will give quiet pleasure to the reader who is not too exacting and show a wide range of human interest.

_The Key of the Fields_ and _Boldero_, by _Henry Milner Rideout_ (Duffield & Company). These two picaresque novelettes have the magical glamor of fairy tales set in Maxfield Parrish landscapes. They have given me great pleasure by reason of their prismatic quality and their whimsical humor. Mr. Rideout is a conscious stylist who never falls into preciosity, but we must accept his world without qualification if we are to enter properly into the spirit of his work.

_The Best College Short Stories_, edited by _Henry T. Schnittkind_ (The Stratford Company). Mr. Schnittkind aims to consider annually the best short stories in college magazines, following the same principles which I have adopted in the present series of volumes. The idea is excellent, and the results are surprisingly good. I find in this collection three stories which would have won a place on my annual Roll of Honor: "The Tomte Gubbe" by Alma P. Abrahamson, "The Dead City" by Isidor Schneider, and "Angele" by John Jones Sharon. The volume includes a large amount of valuable ill.u.s.trative material, including contributions by many magazine editors and successful writers.

_The Scar that Tripled_, by _William G. Shepherd_ (Harper & Brothers).

In this short story Mr. Shepherd relates with vivid detail the true story of the lad whose meeting with Richard Harding Davis at Salonica suggested to the latter the story of "The Deserter." To my mind it is a better story than "The Deserter," and one which will have a quiet life of its own for some time.

_Land's End and Other Stories_, by _Wilbur Daniel Steele_ (Harper & Brothers). I consider this the best volume of short stories by an American author published this year. It rightly claims a place in our literature by virtue of Mr. Steele's sensitive fidelity to the more abiding romance of ordinary life. These stories have a quality of romantic escape which is rare. Behind the complications which his men and women weave for one another looms the eternal but ever-changing pattern of the sea. Few writers show such economy in the use of their material. These stories will last because of their imaginative reality, their warm color, and their finality of artistic execution.

_Mr. Squem and Some Male Triangles_, by _Arthur Russell Taylor_ (George H. Doran Company). These sketches have an American philosophy with more background than the casual reader may at first realize. They help to interpret much that would bewilder the foreigner, and their una.s.suming excellence is noteworthy.

_Atlantic Narratives_ (First and second series), edited with an Introduction by _Charles Swain Thomas_ (The Atlantic Monthly Press).

These two volumes are a well chosen selection from the rich store of short stories published in the Atlantic Monthly during the past few years. Edited for college and high school use, the second series is specially adapted to younger readers. Speaking generally, I should say that these collections would be of more use in cla.s.ses in English narrative than in short story cla.s.ses, but my personal emphasis would be on the special pleasure they will give the general reader, who will find such old favorites as "Little Selves" by Mary Lerner, "In No Strange Land" by Katharine Butler, "The Garden of Memories" by C. A. Mercer, and "Babanchik" by Christina Krysto reprinted in a format which is a delight to the eye. It would be pleasant if these collections should prove to be the forerunners of an annual series of Atlantic stories.

_The Rose-Bush of a Thousand Years_, by _Mabel Wagnalls_ (Funk & Wagnalls Company). When the first part of this book was published in a magazine during 1916 its story value instantly attracted my attention, and later it became familiar to a wider public through the screen version in which Madame n.a.z.imova took the princ.i.p.al part. The present reprint has been long called for, and would have gained if the crude and inartistic second part had been omitted. It forms no essential part of the story and is clearly an addition dictated by supposed moving picture demands.

_A Book of Short Stories_, edited by _Blanche Colton Williams_ (D.

Appleton and Company). This collection of thirteen stories for high schools is an admirable collection along well-trodden paths, and to it is added a wealth of biographical and critical material, well-ordered and clearly exposed. The general reader will wish to have the volume on his shelves, because it renders accessible for the first time in book form Major Frederick Stuart Greene's remarkable story, "Molly McGuire, Fourteen." It is the finest testimony I know of the quality of Dr.

Williams' teaching that a pupil of hers should have produced so notable a story in her cla.s.srooms.

_A Gray Dream_, by _Laura Wolcott_ (Yale University Press). This collection of short stories and reminiscences has all the quiet glow of Indian summer, dreaming over the past with serene conviction and an unconquerable youth of the spirit. The best that New England Puritanism had to reveal is chronicled in these stories, which will remind more than one reader of Emily d.i.c.kinson. They have a finished style which achieves its end without undue pomp and circ.u.mstance.

_The Scarecrow and Other Stories_, by _G. Ranger Wormser_ (E. P. Dutton & Company). These stories by Miss Wormser are the most interesting short story discovery of the year. They are subtle studies in unfamiliar regions of the spirit, and their vivid imaginative quality is not unlike that of Algernon Blackwood, though Miss Wormser's style is somewhat more self-conscious. I believe that this volume heralds a remarkable future.

II. _English and Irish Authors_

_The Tideway_, by "_John Ayscough_" (Benziger Brothers). This collection of stories has much of Henry Harland's charm, with a more complete mastery of plot. These stories are, many of them, studies in social atmosphere, and if their substance is tenuous, Monsignor Bickerstaffe-Drew has made the most of it.

_Johnny Pryde_, by _J. J. Bell_ (Fleming H. Revell Company). The dry merriment of this little book is infectious, and makes it a worthy successor to the best of Wee Macgreegor's earlier adventures.

_The Empty House_, _John Silence_, _The Listener_, and _The Lost Valley_, by _Algernon Blackwood_ (E. P. Dutton & Company). The present reprint of four of Algernon Blackwood's earlier collections of short stories gives me the opportunity to call attention to four books for which I care more personally than for the short stories of any other English writer. No contemporary has continued the magic tradition of Keats and Coleridge more successfully than Mr. Blackwood, particularly in "The Listener" and "The Lost Valley." These two books at least will last longer than any other volume of short stories by an English or American writer published this year.

_The Watcher by the Threshold_, by _John Buchan_ (George H. Doran Company). Seven or eight years ago a remarkable book of animistic stories by a writer then unknown to me was issued in this country. It at once awakened my enthusiasm for the writer's work, and I felt that an important new figure had come into view. But "The Moon Endureth"

attracted almost no attention and has since been forgotten. Mr. Buchan has published other pleasant books since then but the present collection is the first to recapture something of the same beauty, and in recommending it cordially to the public I earnestly hope that Mr.

Buchan's publishers will find it possible to reissue "The Moon Endureth."

_Nights in London_, by _Thomas Burke_ (Henry Holt & Company). Strictly speaking, this is not a volume of short stories, but to those who greatly admired "Limehouse Nights" last year this volume will be found to hold the same fascination of style and to make clearer the human background out of which that book flowered.

_Gentlemen at Arms_, by "_Centurion_" (Doubleday, Page & Co.). This volume stands out as a distinguished record from the host of personal experiences which the war has produced. I think it quite the best of the English collection, and a volume which the earlier Kipling might have been proud to sign. There is a poignancy about these studies which is relieved by a well-considered art.

_Under the Hermes_, by "_Richard Dehan_" (Dodd, Mead & Company). This book is written solely with the worthy object of entertaining the reader. Five or six years ago, I remember steaming down the Labrador in a decrepit little boat called, rather magnificently, the _Stella Maris_ (and fisherman's rumor had it that Lady Morris was so honored by the christening), and my only companion for a week in the stuffy cabin was an independent fur trader on his way to his winter post near Nain. His baggage consisted of two crates of jam and two volumes by "Richard Dehan," and I remember how we banished sleep for several nights and days by reading them to each other, and then beginning all over again. If I knew where Richard White was now, I would send him a copy of "Under the Hermes" to see if the old magic still lingered. It is a collection of good stories imaginatively told.

_Tales of War_, by _Lord Dunsany_ (Little, Brown & Company). This volume is a series of sketches and essays dealing with Lord Dunsany's experiences in the Great War, but it contains one of his best short stories,-"The Prayer of the Men of Daleswood,"-and several fine imaginative fables.

_Five Tales_, by _John Galsworthy_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). This collection of short stories and novelettes should be set on the book shelf beside "The Dark Flower" as one of Galsworthy's two most signal contributions to the poetic interpretation of life. It is not too much to say that this volume takes its place in the great English line.

_The Quest of the Face_, by _Stephen Graham_ (The Macmillan Company).

This volume does not represent the author at his best, but the pa.s.sionate mysticism which Mr. Graham has voiced so n.o.bly in his Russian books still flames through these pages, and there are several sketches in the volume which I should have felt sorry to have missed.

_Children of the Dear Cotswolds_, by _L. Allen Harker_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). These quiet pastoral studies, to be fully enjoyed, should be read aloud slowly by the winter fire, and I think the reader will agree with me that they are a very delicate series of studies in place. Mrs. Harker's readers have a freemasonry of their own to which the pa.s.sword is a love for England and its forgotten Cotswold places.

_The Country Air_, by _L. P. Jacks_ (Henry Holt & Company). It is my particular pride that I was one of the first to hail the remarkable qualities of Mr. Jacks' "Wild Shepherds." I suppose that the present volume will never be widely popular, but to those who enjoy clean human observation, a broad philosophical outlook, and an imaginative trans.m.u.tation of facts, this volume will be always welcome.

_Waysiders_, by _Seumas O'Kelly_ (Frederick A. Stokes Company). As Daniel Corkery was the Irish discovery of last year, so Seumas O'Kelly is the most remarkable Irish find of the present season. These studies lack the disciplined art of Mr. Corkery, but they have the same rich imagination, deep folk spirit, and close observation which distinguished "A Munster Twilight."