The Best Sixty American Short Stories
January to October, 1918: A Critical Summary
The sixty short stories published in the American magazines between January and October, 1918, which I shall discuss in this article are chosen from a larger group of about one hundred and twenty stories, whose literary excellence justifies me in including them in my annual “Roll of Honor.” The stories which are included in this Roll of Honor have been chosen from the stories published in seventy-four American periodicals during the first ten months of 1918. In selecting them I have sought to accept the author’s point of view and manner of treatment, and to measure simply his degree of success in accomplishing what he set out to achieve. I have permitted no personal preference or prejudice to influence my mind consciously for or against a story. But I must confess that it has been difficult to eliminate personal admiration completely in the further winnowing which has resulted in this selection of sixty stories. Below are set forth the particular qualities which have seemed to me to justify in each case the inclusion of a story in this list.
1. A Simple Act of Piety, by Achmed Abdullah (The All-Story Weekly). To those who enjoyed last year Thomas Burke’s “Limehouse Nights,” the series of Pell Street stories which Captain Abdullah is publishing in the Century Magazine, Collier’s Weekly, and the All-Story Weekly will be welcome. To a vivid sense of color and an economy of dramatic situation, “A Simple Act of Piety,” which is the best of these stories, adds a fine appreciation of the Oriental point of view. The characterization is almost subjective it is so real, and the story is a fine crystallization of the poetry inherent in New York Chinatown life.
2. The Man of Ideas, by Sherwood Anderson (Little Review), points the way to a new American realism. Those who have read Mr. Anderson’s other Winesburg stories in the Seven Arts and the Little Review will remember that he has set himself the task of portraying the spiritual values of a small Ohio community without sentimentality. These stories suggest the Spoon River Anthology, and indeed the tradition inaugurated by Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, and other realists of the new Chicago School seems likely to carry on the vision of Walt Whitman to new goals of achievement.
3. Cruelties (Harper’s Magazine) and 4. “Goddess Size” (Harper’s Magazine), by Edwina Stanton Babcock. When Miss Babcock published “The Excursion” last year in the Pictorial Review, I expressed my belief that it was one of the best five American short stories of the year. I regard these two stories as marking a significant advance in Miss Babcock’s art. Her characterization of these Nantucket folks has a subtle humor and poetry linked to a faithful realism. Miss Babcock continues to prove herself a leader in short-story regionalism. “Cruelties” is very quietly done and no point is over-stressed. In fact I find a greater reticence in these stories than in Miss Babcock’s earlier work, and this is all to the good.
5. The Bell-Tower of P’An-Ku, by “John Brangwyn” (Century Magazine). This story by an American novelist, whose name is not to be revealed, comes with a definite message to Americans from China. It is an allegory quietly setting forth the essence of the imaginative attitude toward life. Like a shifting tapestry, pictures weave to and fro, and the way is opened to us to see the vision that the unknown Chinese master saw.
6. Buster, by Katharine Holland Brown (Scribner’s Magazine). Here in clear swift portraiture Miss Brown has caught the spirit of America, youthful and eager, living dangerously and happily, and prepared to face danger, and, if necessary, seek it. “Buster” is a study of the typical young American who finds himself at last as an aviator in France. No story could better interpret our spirit to the English and French imagination.
7. The Sorry Tale of Hennery K. Lunk, by Ellis Parker Butler (Harper’s Magazine). This tale of a mournful mariner ashore on the banks of the Mississippi would have delighted Mark Twain. I hope Mr. Butler will forgive me if I state that it contains more poetry than prose. But after all, mournful mariners come and go, while their stories go on forever.
8. The Black Pearl, by Katharine Butler (Atlantic Monthly). This story, redolent of the East, is an admirable study in atmosphere. It has all the nostalgia of a half-forgotten dream, and yet it is so confidently set forth that we may enter its background without difficulty. Style is not a common quality, I regret to say, in American short stories, but the picture portrayed in “The Black Pearl” is well nigh flawless.
9. Some Ladies and Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell (Smart Set), is a wilful apologue of poets and their wives which will delight the thoughtful while disappointing the serious. It is really a prose poem without any moral whatever, unless perhaps the moral Miss Guiney once pointed out when she said that tall talk always reminded her of the Himalayas. I commend the fable to all would-be poets.
10. The Gallowsmith, by Irvin S. Cobb (All-Story Weekly). This story, which marks a great departure from Mr. Cobb’s usual vein, is one of the most grim stories an American magazine has ever published, but it is a masterly portrait of a professional hangman which the reader cannot easily forget. With vivid completeness of detail, and characterization which is admirably suggestive, Mr. Cobb manages the situation in such a way that its conclusion is inevitable, yet unexpected.
11. The Open Window, by Charles Caldwell Dobie (Harper’s Magazine), is a sequel to “Laughter,” which I published last year as one of the best short stories of 1917. Unlike most sequels, it is perhaps better than its predecessor, and the mastery of his art which Mr. Dobie shows only serves to confirm my prediction of two years ago, that in Mr. Dobie America would find before long one of its four or five best short-story writers. An adventurous publisher, anxious to issue the best that is being written in American fiction, cannot afford to neglect Mr. Dobie.
12. The Emerald of Tamerlane, by H. G. Dwight and John Taylor (Century Magazine). Every discriminating reader knows H. G. Dwight’s book of short stories entitled “Stamboul Nights,” and admires its quality of romantic mystery and poetic description. “The Emerald of Tamerlane” admirably sustains Mr. Dwight’s reputation for vivid realization of Persian life.
13. Blind Vision, by Mary Mitchell Freedley (Century Magazine). This story, by S. Weir Mitchell’s granddaughter, marks not only Mrs. Freedley’s first appearance in print, but the arrival of a remarkable new talent. It is a study of an American aviator and a spiritual problem that he had to decide, and is set down with exceptional artistic economy.
14. The Irish of It, by Cornelia Throop Geer (Atlantic Monthly). This little study, which is hardly more than a dialogue, is inimitable in its deft humorous characterization. It is good news to be able to report that Miss Geer is planning a volume of stories about these Irish boys and girls whose poetry of thought and action is so coaxing.
15. Imagination, by Gordon Hall Gerould (Scribner’s Magazine). Captain Gerould has taken his subject quietly and handled it with a thoughtful sense of its possibilities. This study of a successful writer of best sellers, with his egregious solemnity and lack of imagination, is delightfully rendered. The subtlety of the author’s psychology will not blind the reader to its essential truth.
16. Marchpane, by Katharine Fullerton Gerould (Harper’s Magazine). Mrs. Gerould has only published one short story this year, but fortunately it ranks among her best. It is written with all her usual close observation of abnormal psychological situations. The art of few stories is concealed so successfully, and the story is one of which Henry James would have been proud.
17. In Maulmain Fever-Ward, by George Gilbert. This story, which appeared in a Chicago magazine, is the first of an unusual series of stories dealing with East Indian life. It is full of a wild poetry of speech and action, set against a background of almost oppressive natural beauty. I think that the story would have gained by a little more reticence, but the groundwork is firm and the detail admirably rendered.
18. “Beloved Husband” (Harper’s Magazine) and 19. “Poor Ed” (The Liberator), by Susan Glaspell. Susan Glaspell has already won a high reputation in three equally difficult fields, those of the novel, the drama, and the short story. Considering her as a short-story writer only, we may say that these two stories reflect the best that she has done, with the possible exception of the story entitled “A Jury of Her Peers,” which I reprinted in “The Best Short Stories of 1917.” Both are studies in suppressed ambition, set forth with a gentle humor which does not fail by virtue of overstress. Susan Glaspell is at her best in “Poor Ed,” a study in the triumph of failure.
20. Sinjinn Surviving, by Armistead C. Gordon (Harper’s Magazine). This story is one more addition to Mr. Gordon’s studies of Virginia negro plantation life. It introduces us once more to Ommirandy and Uncle Jonas, and is a quiet idyl of the life that survived in Virginia after the fall of the Confederacy.
21. Even So, by Charles Boardman Hawes (The Bellman). The art of Mr. Hawes has developed so quietly during the past few years that it has not attracted the attention it richly deserves. This study of life and death many years ago in the Southern Seas recaptures much of the magic of the old sailing-ship days when the Helen of Troy and other American clippers came bravely into port. The story has a fine legendary quality.
22. Decay, by Ben Hecht (Little Review). When Mr. Hecht published “Life” in the Little Review some few years ago I predicted that the future would reveal the fulfilment of his remarkable promise, although I was not quite sure whether Mr. Hecht would find himself most fully in the short story or in the novel. During these years his output has been small but distinguished, and the present study of Chicago life shows a marked advance in technique. Nevertheless I now think that the novel is Mr. Hecht’s natural vehicle, and that when his first novel appears it will create a profound literary impression.
23. Their War, by Hetty Hemenway (Atlantic Monthly). When Miss Hemenway published “Four Days” in the Atlantic Monthly last year, it created more discussion than any other war story of the year. Her new story, which is in as quiet a key, represents an advance in her art, and the two stories taken together represent one of the few important contributions America has made to the imaginative literature of the war. The war has taught us that youth is old enough, under the stress of events, to speak for itself, and there is a brave frankness about Mrs. Richard’s exposition of this truth which brings it home to all.
24. At the Back of God Speed, by Rupert Hughes (Hearst’s Magazine). Three years ago Mr. Hughes published in the Metropolitan Magazine two stories which were as fine in their way as the best of Irvin Cobb’s humorous stories. In “Michaeleen! Michaelawn!” and “Sent for Out” Mr. Hughes depicted with his wonted kindliness and pathos the first generation of successful Irish immigrants. “At the Back of God Speed” now completes the series, which form as a whole the most faithful portrait yet drawn of the Americanized Irishman.
25. The Father’s Hand, by George Humphrey (The Bookman). Although Mr. Humphrey was born in England he has now definitely adopted us and I suppose we may claim him as an American writer. This brief and touching study of one minor incident in the Great War shows a fine sense of human values, whose artistic effect is enhanced by deliberate understatement.
26. Her’s NOT to Reason Why, by Fannie Hurst (Cosmopolitan). This story was published in 1917, when it unaccountably failed to attract my attention, and as an act of prosaic justice I now chronicle it, because I believe it to be the best story Miss Hurst has yet published. The temptation to oversentimentalize the theme must have been almost irresistible, but the author has not failed in reticence and this study of a certain aspect of New York life will not be soon forgotten.
27. The Little Family (Harper’s Magazine) and 28. The Visit of the Master (Harper’s Magazine), by Arthur Johnson. These stories have nothing in common except the fact that they reinforce Mr. Johnson’s claim this year to rank with Mrs. Gerould, Wilbur Daniel Steele, H. G. Dwight, and Charles Caldwell Dobie as one of the most finished artists in America to-day. “The Visit of the Master” is an altogether delightful social comedy, not without a moral. “The Little Family,” on the other hand, is a poignant study of the effect of war on the gentle imaginations of two lonely men. Its quality makes us think of the relation between Stevenson and his old nurse, and stylistically it is admirable. I suggest with all diffidence, and from a point of view of frank personal preference that it is very possibly the best short story of the year.
29. In the Open Code, by Burton Kline (The Stratford Journal). This brief tale in sharp outline recounts a single human incident. Romantic in treatment, it is told with the eye on the object. It is a finished piece of workmanship.
30. The Willow Walk, by Sinclair Lewis (Saturday Evening Post). It was an interesting problem which presented itself to Mr. Lewis when he thought of writing this story. Could a criminal of marked intellectual ability create a dual personality for himself by inventing an imaginary brother, give up his own personality after his crime, and live on undetected in the continuous imaginative realization of his new personality? Mr. Lewis has studied the psychological effects of such a successful impersonation and shown the destructive force of mental suggestion on the soul, in a manner which is in interesting contrast to that employed by Charles Caldwell Dobie in the story which I have mentioned above.
31. The Haymakers (Stratford Journal) and 32. Old Lady Hudson (The Midland), by Jeannette Marks. These two allegorical stories are written in what is usually a most hazardous literary form. I think that Miss Marks has steered clear of Scylla and Charybdis successfully, and pointed out to a somewhat deaf world the imaginative realities which underlie the commercial crust of our American civilization. These stories, and others of similar tenor, are to be published shortly in a volume entitled “Forgotten Sins.”
33. Nettle and Foxglove, by Marjory Morten (Century Magazine). This is a study in conflicting temperaments which is very gently rendered with an art that recalls in its subtlety that of Miss Ethel Sidgwick’s novels. A collection of Mrs. Morten’s studies, reprinted from the files of the Century Magazine, would make an interesting volume.
34. The Story Vinton Heard at Mallorie, by Katharine Prescott Moseley (Scribner’s Magazine). Miss Moseley, who is a niece of Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, shares with Mrs. Frances G. Wood the distinction of having contributed one of the two most enduring legends this year to the supernatural literature of the war. One of the most significant aspects of the American short story during the past two years has been its increasing preoccupation with supernatural beliefs, especially as they have a bearing on the fortunes of the war. Arthur Machen perhaps inaugurated this movement with his remarkable story about the angels of Mons, but the spirit was implicit before that in much American work. In editing a series of War Echoes for The Bookman last year, I had occasion to read the manuscripts of several hundred war stories, and it was a gratifying surprise to find that fully sixty per cent of these stories dealt with some supernatural aspect of the war.
35. Clouds, by Walter L. Myers (The Midland). This remarkable study of place is one of the best stories so far produced in the literary revival throughout the Middle West which centres around the nucleus of The Midland. I wish that The Midland would publish a volume of stories selected from its columns during the last three years. Such a book would quickly earn a permanent place on our shelves.
36. Owen Carey, by Harvey J. O’Higgins (The Century Magazine). I believe this story to be the most distinguished in the series of imaginary American portraits that Mr. O’Higgins has been publishing during the past two years. These studies aim to take as a starting point the lives of men and women successful in many different fields, and to depict in each case the thing which may have seemed perfectly trivial at the time, but which actually proved to be the turning point in their careers. It is such an incident in the life of a successful romantic novelist which Mr. O’Higgins portrays in this story.
37. The Second-Rater, by James Oppenheim (Century Magazine). In this brilliant study of artistic temperament, Mr. Oppenheim portrays the spiritual struggle of an artist in such a way as to reveal the finer grain. The author has been clearly influenced by Henry James, but the texture of his story is a little loosely woven.
38. Unto Each His Crown, by Norma Patterson (The Bookman). This nervously written study of death in battle and the discovery it awakened is the work of a new writer who should have a brilliant future if my judgment does not betray me. Like Miss Moseley’s story, it is a study in the supernatural implications of the war. There is a proud joy in it which the reader will find infectious.
39. His Escape, by Will Payne (Saturday Evening Post). I regard this as the best newspaper story published in America since “The Stolen Story.” It has quick dramatic action, well stressed conflict, clean-cut characterization, and a thoroughly adequate conclusion. If the style is somewhat staccato, this is perhaps in harmony with the character of the story.
40. The Toast to Forty-Five, by William Dudley Pelley (Pictorial Review). Mr. Pelley has “the human touch.” His stories of Paris, Vermont, have a homely quality which never over-stresses the emotional values, even when it almost seems as if the author were going to sentimentalize them. No work could be more indigenous to the soil. Its very roughnesses are a product of environment. Though Mr. Pelley as yet entirely lacks style, there is a driving force within him which should finally shape a personal style in much the same manner as may be observed in the evolution of Irvin S. Cobb’s best work.
41. The Poet, by Lawrence Perry (Harper’s Magazine). This story is a study in courage similar in quality to “A Certain Rich Man,” which I published last year in “The Best Short Stories of 1917.” It is very deliberately built up as a literary problem, but with unquestionable artistic sincerity. It would have been easy to key this story too tightly from an emotional point of view, but Mr. Perry’s feeling in the matter has been sure.
42. Green Umbrellas, by Lucy Pratt (Pictorial Review). Symbolism is woven into this story as modestly as in “The Sun Chaser” by Jeannette Marks, which appeared in the same magazine during 1916. Miss Pratt has abandoned her negro character stories for the time being, and written about a little boy who brings his parents together. It is slightly sentimentalized, but this is a weakness which the other excellent qualities of the story largely neutralize.
43. David and Jonathan, by Mary Brecht Pulver (Mother’s Magazine). This idyl of boyhood friendship, which may not have come to the attention of many readers, has interested me as much as Roland Pertwee’s notable study of adolescence, entitled “Red and White.” It is a study in loyalties seen from a boy’s point of view, mirroring as it does later, if no firmer, loyalties of men and women.
44. The Sixth Man, by George Palmer Putnam (Ladies’ Home Journal). It is claimed by the author of this story that it is based on fact. Whether this is so or not, it is an interesting study of a possible historical situation woven around the death of Edith Cavell. It seems to me a made story rather than a told story, but granting this weakness which has not been sufficiently covered, it is noteworthy in its way.
45. Extra Men, by Harrison Rhodes (Harper’s Magazine). This story is an instance of atmosphere perfectly realized in brief compass. But it is more than that. It is a new legend for American literature fairly comparable to Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and Hawthorne’s “The Gray Champion,” in its portraiture of Washington and all the armies of the American dead sailing for France with the American troopships in the morning.
46. Daffodils, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick (Atlantic Monthly). Of the series of stories based on the symbolism of flowers which Mrs. de Sélincourt has contributed during the past few years to American magazines, “Daffodils” is probably the best. Full of the spirit of young England and the many thousand youths mown in Flanders like a field of daffodils in glad surrender, this story reflects the spiritual analogies of the flower in the human heart. It is the same spirit of eternal English youth which is reflected in Rupert Brooke’s last sonnets.
47. Release, by Elsie Singmaster (Pictorial Review). One more memory of Lincoln, uniting the tradition of the Civil War with the tradition of the present war, is evoked by Elsie Singmaster in this story. There is very little action in “Release” of a physical kind, but the spiritual values are dynamic, and the story is told with a processional dignity attained in other stories only by this author.
48. The Return, by Gordon Arthur Smith (Scribner’s Magazine). From the romantic fortunes of Ferdinand Taillandy, Mr. Smith has turned to a poignant study of French war life. With great reticence and gentleness he has idealized the return of a soldier home to his greatest desire, and so added one more to the notable chronicles of supernatural life which the war has evoked from American artists.
49. Solitaire, by Fleta Campbell Springer (Harper’s Magazine). I regard this as one of the two best short stories of the year, though in saying so I wish to put forward no more than a personal judgment. The character whom Mrs. Springer has created is unlike any other in American fiction, and yet, in his modesty, efficiency, and sensitiveness, a most natural American individual. There are many different passions for perfection among men, most of them secret, and of these I think that the passion of Corey is not the least noble.
50. The Dark Hour (Atlantic Monthly), 51. A Taste of the Old Boy (Collier’s Weekly), and 52. The Wages of Sin (Pictorial Review), by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Once more it is necessary to affirm that Wilbur Daniel Steele shares with Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould the distinction of first place among contemporary American short-story artists. I still think that “Ching, Ching, Chinaman” is the best short story that Mr. Steele has yet written, and that its only close rival is “A White Horse Winter,” but “The Dark Hour” I should place third in an anthology of Mr. Steele’s stories, and first in an anthology of American war stories. In its message to the American people it yields in significance only to the best of President Wilson’s state papers, and serves to crystallize the issue before the country in this war as unforgetably as William Vaughn Moody crystallized the war issue less than twenty years ago in his “Ode in Time of Hesitation,” also published in the Atlantic Monthly. In the light of present events, Mr. Steele’s message has only increased in significance. Of the two other stories, “The Wages of Sin” takes its rightful place with the other Urkey Island stories which I have discussed in the past. “A Taste of the Old Boy” is one more war legend for our anthology.
53. The Bird of Serbia, by Julian Street (Collier’s Weekly). Repeatedly in the course of this article I have had occasion to point out that the best of the year’s war stories are creating new legends. How a bird in a cage in a little Serbian village may have been the cause of the Great War is persuasively set forth by Mr. Street in this story. The conclusion is one of the best examples of a justifiable surprise ending that I know of, and the human quality of Mr. Street’s characterization renders its inherent improbability psychologically convincing.
54. The Three Zoölogical Wishes, by Booth Tarkington (Collier’s Weekly). This is the most amusing study of adolescence that Mr. Tarkington has given us. It has countless subtle touches of observation which quietly build up two remarkably accurate portraits. I regard it as the best of the new series which Mr. Tarkington has been publishing in Collier’s Weekly.
55. Five Rungs Gone, by Albert W. Tolman (Youth’s Companion). For many years the most interesting weekly feature of the Youth’s Companion has been the danger story in which the youthful hero escapes from extraordinary peril by virtue of courage and great intellectual ingenuity. Most of these stories are built on a regular formula and cannot claim much literary value. But now and then a situation is so vividly realized, and the situation so logically deduced, that the story has literary justification. And “Five Rungs Gone” is altogether exceptional in this respect.
56. At Isham’s, by Edward C. Venable (Scribner’s Magazine). The zest of this story consists in the intellectual subtlety of mental conflict. It contrasts the characters of several habitués of a New York café who form a little group each night for endless discussion. The value of the story rests in the manner in which events bring out variations in character, and the solution of the story is as absorbing as a chess problem.
57. De Vilmarte’s Luck (Harper’s Magazine) and 58. Huntington’s Credit (Harper’s Magazine), by Mary Heaton Vorse. In these two stories there is a marked contrast of subject matter. “De Vilmarte’s Luck” is a study of the artistic temperament, with fine ironies keenly portrayed. The war provides the story with a solution which reveals the finer grain. In “Huntington’s Credit” we have a study in suppressed desires, very quietly told, with a poignancy softened somehow by the quality of character. In these two stories Mary Heaton Vorse has given us the best work written by her in the last four years.
59. The White Battalion, by Frances Gilchrist Wood (The Bookman). Here is the last of the fine supernatural legends inspired during the past year by the Great War. The White Battalion of the dead which fights on the side of the Allies is comparable to the marching host seen by Harrison Rhodes in “Extra Men,” but there is an élan in this story which suggests a deeper spiritual background.
60. In the House of Morphy, by John Seymour Wood (Scribner’s Magazine). This legend of old New Orleans has the romantic glow of Mr. Cable’s best novels linked to a well-developed plot with a fine quality of logical surprise. It is one of the best stories written by a fastidious artist of the old school who appears seldom in our magazines, and always with the finest substance that he can give.