Short Stories (single author) Books

The train slackened, a brakeman thrust his head in at the door and shouted "Bah,"—a mysterious formality observed on American trains as they enter towns,—and an elderly lady, two drummers, and a young man with a satchel got out, followed by the languid envy of the other passengers, who had longer or shorter penances of heat and dust before them. The train got under way again, while the knot... more...

Glmartin was still laughing professionally at the prospective buyer's funny story when the telephone on his desk buzzed. He said: "Excuse me for a minute, old man," to the customer—Hopkins, the Connecticut manufacturer. "Hello; who is this?" he spoke into the transmitter. "Oh, how are you?—Yes—I was out—Is that so?—Too bad—Too bad—Yes; just my luck to be out. I... more...

Narrative Forms —This little volume is meant to be a discussion of but one of the various forms that literature takes, and it will be first in order to see what are the elements that go to the making of a narrative having literary quality. A story may be true or false, but we shall here be concerned primarily with fiction, and with fiction of no great length. In writing of this sort the first... more...

Chapter I The curate was walking on the cliffs with his lady-love. All the sky was grey, and all the sea was grey. The soft March wind blew over the rocky shore; it could not rustle the bright green weed that hung wet from the boulders, but it set all the tufts of grass upon the cliffs nodding to the song of the ebbing tide. The lady was the vicar's daughter; her name was Violetta. 'Let us... more...

A crosser old woman than Mrs. Deborah Thornby was certainly not to be found in the whole village of Hilton. Worth, in country phrase, a power of money, and living (to borrow another rustic expression) upon her means, the exercise of her extraordinary faculty for grumbling and scolding seemed the sole occupation of her existence, her only pursuit, solace, and amusement; and really it would have been a... more...

"There," said Tâvita the teacher, pointing with his paddle to a long, narrow peninsula which stretched out into the shallow waters of the lagoon, "there, that is the place where the battle was fought. In those days a village of thirty houses or more stood there; now no one liveth there, and only sometimes do the people come here to gather cocoanuts." The White Man nodded.... more...

The tall young man faded back quickly, poised for an instant and then threw a long high pass. The crowd came up roaring. Twenty yards from the goal line a smaller, sturdier player swerved quickly around the end and took the pass in his stride. With a beautiful curving run he tricked the fullback, crossed the line and then, showing no sign of effort, trotted back up the field and threw the ball to the... more...

PART I—WEST. The sun was rising in the foot-hills. But for an hour the black mass of Sierra eastward of Angel's had been outlined with fire, and the conventional morning had come two hours before with the down coach from Placerville. The dry, cold, dewless California night still lingered in the long canyons and folded skirts of Table Mountain. Even on the mountain road the air was still sharp,... more...

ALAS, POOR YORICK! In paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tenderness of Eugene Field—the poet of whose going the West may say, "He took our daylight with him"—one of his fellow journalists has written that he was a jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew in Yorick. He was not only,—so the writer implied,—the maker of jibes and fantastic devices, but the bard of... more...

NICK BABA'S LAST DRINK. t was Christmas Eve, and the one narrow main street of a small country town was ablaze. Extra lights were glowing in all the little shops; yet all this illumination served only to make more apparent the untidy condition of the six-by-nine window panes, as well as the goods therein. Men and women were hastening homeward with well-filled baskets which they had provided for... more...