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