Modern Short Stories: A Book for High Schools

IN a certain town there lived a shoemaker named Martin Avdeitch. He lived in a basement room which possessed but one window. This window looked onto the street, and through it a...

“Try the settee,” said Holmes, relapsing into his arm-chair and putting his finger-tips together, as was his custom when in judicial moods. “I know, my dear Watson, that you sha...

“I do not think the human being ever has lived who has not thought that he ought to have happiness,” he said. “We begin at once to get ready for heaven; but heaven is a long way...

Well, this didn’t suit Sonny’s sense o’ jestice _no way_, borryin’ from one an’ payin’ back to somebody else; so he thess up an’ argued about it—told her thet fellers thet borri...

Jimmy went to the Planters’ Hotel, registered as Ralph D. Spencer, and engaged a room. He leaned on the desk and declared his platform to the clerk. He said he had come to Elmor...

Now that the police had entered the affair, Joyce felt that there remained nothing to be done. Uniformed authority was in charge of events; it could not fail to find Joan. She h...

“No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are, and what their object was in playing this prank—if it was a prank—upon me. It was a pretty expensive joke for them...

William did not believe that Mr. Haughton had given any such orders, but he had gotten into trouble not long before by refusing to give a mount to a friend of Haughton’s whom he...

After the supper was done, the three brothers sat smoking and talking over an offer that had been made about some Shetland sheep. For a time, Anne watched them in silence. They...

At three o’clock precisely old Sam, finding himself something of a hero and quite glad to escape from the embarrassment which this position entailed upon him, once more sped sky...

One morning for a brief moment he came back to real life again and lay quite still, seeing everything about him with clear eyes and for the first time, as though he had but just...

It did not take long to explain how she had laughed at Seumas’s vain efforts to detain her, and had come down to the haven. As she approached, she heard Mànus singing, and so ha...

“There, there,” said Avdeitch. “Now I will give you one. Here you are,”—and he took an apple from the basket and handed it to the boy. “I will pay you for it, my good woman,” he...

“I caught up a belaying-pin, though little good that would have done me. I think he saw me do it, and doubtless he set me down for an enemy then and there.

And then something else came to irritate him: it was one of “these dratted airyplanes.” “Airyplanes” were his pet aversion. He could find nothing to be said in their favor. Nast...

R. H. Davis: The Bar Sinister; Washington Irving: The Rose of the Alhambra; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Rip Van Winkle; The Three Beautiful Princesses; Rudyard Kipling: Garm, A...

And as though it had been foreseen, and a policy arranged to meet it, the white army no longer fought in the open, but lined up along the walls to defend the immovable caves. Th...

The first hour of the show overwhelmed her. It was too splendid and mystifying to be comprehended immediately, or to permit a divided attention. Even Lady Washington dropped out...

Nep and Ruky often talked together, and though one used barks and the other words, there was a perfect understanding between them. Woe to the straggler that dared to rouse Nep’s...

“Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The man’s business was a small one, and there was not...

“It is beautiful—very beautiful,” said the journalist, her eyes fastened to it with an uncontrollable fascination. She put out her fingers and let them rest caressingly on the s...

“But Saunders has been fillin’ his lungs for five and thirty year wi’ strong Drumtochty air, an’ eatin’ naethin’ but kirny aitmeal, and drinkin’ naethin’ but fresh milk frae the...

The world is so full of selfishness, and resulting misery, that every one more or less often thinks how different life would be if every individual were to be ideal. Somewhere,...

Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundred yards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was, without perceptible current, cool and invi...

For many years high school teachers have wished for books of short stories edited for high school use. They have known that most novels, however interesting, are too long to hol...

It is I, Mànus MacCodrum, I am telling you that, you, Anndra of my blood, And you, Neil my grandfather, and you, and you, and you! Ay, ay, Mànus my name is, Mànus MacMànus! It i...

There is a wonderfully close sympathy between man and the animal world,—a sympathy that is especially strong in the case of either the horse or the dog, animals that are the clo...

7. Write a story of heroism in ordinary life. Use the slang, or the dialect of daily life as you have actually heard it, as a means of increasing the effect. Be sure to make you...