O. Henry Memorial Award prize stories of 1927

COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY. COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY THE AMERICAN MERCURY, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY P. F. C...

Cobb, Irvin S., The Wooden Decoy (_H. I. and C._, Dec., 1926); This Man’s World (_H. I. and C._, May); Louder Than Words (_H. I. and C._, June); As Brands from the Burning (_H....

The short story has known better seasons, says a reader who, moved by indigestion and nausea, forswears the magazine tale of to-day as food unfit. The trouble with this reader l...

Jehu did not reply. He held steadily to the reins, and the carriage fairly flew through the misty haze. Willie wanted to ask for the reins himself. He felt he could drive much m...

“You talk too much, all the same,” Al said. He came out from the kitchen. The cut-off barrels of the shotgun made a slight bulge under the waist of his too tight-fitting overcoa...

The next morning she came down the steps as she had always done, in the same clothes, with the same air of abysmal indifference. She had not betrayed him during life, and in dea...

Jukes turned, wild-eyed, and faced the mate. Men on the forecastle head looked down and laughed to hear him curse. He gazed up at them, vacant eyed. He looked toward the shore,...

The man in the flying coat blew upon his numbed fingers and smiled. “I’m Hoyt,” he said. “Skipper of C Flight. I’m going to take you now, before A gets after you.” He turned to...

The weeks crawled on slowly. Paterson felt like a man climbing a steep ladder. Each day was a rung behind him. Each new rung showed an infinite number still ahead, waiting for h...

Presently to the eastward there came a low roar. He looked at his wrist watch. The hands pointed to six minutes before four o’clock. The ground trembled slightly to the sound of...

“No, not anything she said. It was----” Amy bit her lip. “All right! I’ll tell you. Before we left your apartment I just happened to notice that Tom had disappeared. So I went t...

Henriette was excited. So Toni was sick, very low! She gulped down some coffee and got her stick, and set out for Josephine’s house, walking down in the ditch. She was so heavy...

He got off at last. His big car seemed to eat the miles, exaltation keeping time to the healthy song of his motor. He went swiftly through the mean towns squatting on the island...

Sitting at one of the tables were Lord and Lady Greville, Nancy Bromley, and John Taylor. If Levering had noticed the presence of these companions of his week-end at Constance C...

The river line, with its row of live oaks festooned with Spanish moss, was a scant half mile away now, and the going underfoot was solid. Bulldog broke into a steady run. In a f...

“Yas-suh, Jedge, de same what tol’ me dat lie ’bout dat Washin’ton nigger dyin’. Dis heah Chinkapin cause all de trouble, Jedge, Yo’ Honour. If it wasn’ fo’ Chinkapin’s lyin’, J...

It was like sliding down an enormous shoot-the-chute, even to the water at the bottom. The ocean was there, rushing up to the pitch of the plane’s nose, a ridged, blurry surface...

Through the noise of the wind humming and shrieking in the wires and of the waves hissing and slapping against the wood, Ronny could hear few sounds which would indicate that hu...

He went on out of doors and sat on a stump near the house, where his father used to smoke his pipe in the evening. It came to him there that _he_ was the head of the family now....

But whatever it was that had snapped in him had snapped, too, in his people. An uneasy sense of shame lay over them. There wasn’t one who didn’t know Tampa Simmons as he knew hi...

It proved a relation which, while pleasant, was of short duration. Sam’l was neglecting his operatic interests at the time in favour of interpretative dancing, and his habit of...

“I tell ye,” Zeb’s eulogy was gathering momentum. “We boys set a terrible store by Gram. She was cuter and smarter tied to that chair than Marm was on two good legs--hands to ma...

“Oh, yes, I always name my dolls,” Patricia assured them. “My dolls have beautiful names. They’re all the names of the great actresses and singers.” And she began gravely to rep...

The children surrounded Patricia again. They were begging her not to cry. Her cheek was laid against the little calf’s silky ear, and she was telling it, in her own mind, “Don’t...

Just as the dawn was turning the blurred square of her window to rose Matilda decided what she would do. She would go to a city, Chicago, perhaps; change her name to Mathilde La...

Then the portières between the parlour and the hall parted. Enid appeared muffled to the chin in a green-velvet cape edged with soft gray fur. Over the top of her spiralling mop...