Chapter 2

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), who achieved fame as “Mark Twain,” is only incidentally a short story writer, although he wrote many short pieces of fiction. His humorous quality, I mean, is so preponderant, that one hardly thinks of the form. Indeed, he is never very strong in fictional construction, and of the modern short story art he evidently knew or cared little. He is a humorist in the large sense, as are Rabelais and Cervantes, although he is also a humorist in various restricted applications of the word that are wholly American. _The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County_ was his first publication of importance, and it saw the light in the Nov. 18, 1865, number of _The Saturday Press_. It was republished in the collection, _The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches_, in 1867. Others of his best pieces of short fiction are: _The Canvasser’s Tale_ (December, 1876, _Atlantic Monthly_), _The £1,000,000 Bank Note_ (January, 1893, _Century Magazine_), _The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance_ (November, 1893, _Cosmopolitan_), _Traveling with a Reformer_ (December, 1893, _Cosmopolitan_), _The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg_ (December, 1899, _Harper’s_), _A Double-Barrelled Detective Story_ (January and February, 1902, _Harper’s_) _A Dog’s Tale_ (December, 1903, _Harper’s_), and _Eve’s Diary_ (December, 1905, _Harper’s_). Among Twain’s chief collections of short stories are: _The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches_ (1867); _The Stolen White Elephant_ (1882), _The £1,000,000 Bank Note_ (1893), and _The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories and Sketches_ (1900).

Harry Stillwell Edwards (1855– ), a native of Georgia, together with Sarah Barnwell Elliott (? – ) and Will N. Harben (1858–1919) have continued in the vein of that earlier writer, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet (1790–1870), author of _Georgia Scenes_ (1835). Edwards’ best work is to be found in his short stories of black and white life after the manner of Richard Malcolm Johnston. He has written several novels, but he is essentially a writer of human-nature sketches. “He is humorous and picturesque,” says Fred Lewis Pattee, “and often he is for a moment the master of pathos, but he has added nothing new and nothing commandingly distinctive.”[3] An exception to this might be made in favor of _Elder Brown’s Backslide_ (August, 1885, _Harper’s_), a story in which all the elements are so nicely balanced that the result may well be called a masterpiece of objective humor and pathos. Others of his short stories especially worthy of mention are: _Two Runaways_ (July, 1886, _Century_), _Sister Todhunter’s Heart_ (July, 1887, _Century_), “_De Valley an’ de Shadder_” (January, 1888, _Century_), _An Idyl of “Sinkin’ Mount’in”_ (October, 1888, _Century_), _The Rival Souls_ (March, 1889, _Century_), _The Woodhaven Goat_ (March, 1899, _Century_), and _The Shadow_ (December, 1906, _Century_). His chief collections are _Two Runaways, and Other Stories_ (1889) and _His Defense, and Other Stories_ (1898).

The most notable, however, of the group of short story writers of Georgia life is perhaps Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822–1898). He stands between Longstreet and the younger writers of Georgia life. His first book was _Georgia Sketches, by an Old Man_ (1864). _The Goose Pond School_, a short story, had been written in 1857; it was not published, however, till it appeared in the November and December, 1869, numbers of a Southern magazine, _The New Eclectic_, over the pseudonym “Philemon Perch.” His famous _Dukesborough Tales_ (1871–1874) was largely a republication of the earlier book. Other noteworthy collections of his are: _Mr. Absalom Billingslea and Other Georgia Folk_ (1888), _Mr. Fortner’s Marital Claims, and Other Stories_ (1892), and _Old Times in Middle Georgia_ (1897). Among individual stories stand out: _The Organ-Grinder_ (July, 1870, _New Eclectic_), _Mr. Neelus Peeler’s Conditions_ (June, 1879, _Scribner’s Monthly_), _The Brief Embarrassment of Mr. Iverson Blount_ (September, 1884, _Century_); _The Hotel Experience of Mr. Pink Fluker_ (June, 1886, _Century_), republished in the present collection; _The Wimpy Adoptions_ (February, 1887, _Century_), _The Experiments of Miss Sally Cash_ (September, 1888, _Century_), and _Our Witch_ (March, 1897, _Century_). Johnston must be ranked almost with Bret Harte as a pioneer in “local color” work, although his work had little recognition until his _Dukesborough Tales_ were republished by Harper & Brothers in 1883.

Bret Harte (1839–1902) is mentioned here owing to the late date of his story included in this volume, _Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff_ (March, 1901, _Harper’s_), although his work as a whole of course belongs to an earlier period of our literature. It is now well-thumbed literary history that _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ (August, 1868, _Overland_) and _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_ (January, 1869, _Overland_) brought him a popularity that, in its suddenness and extent, had no precedent in American literature save in the case of Mrs. Stowe and _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. According to Harte’s own statement, made in the retrospect of later years, he set out deliberately to add a new province to American literature. Although his work has been belittled because he has chosen exceptional and theatric happenings, yet his real strength came from his contact with Western life.

Irving and Dickens and other models served only to teach him his art. “Finally,” says Prof. Pattee, “Harte was the parent of the modern form of the short story. It was he who started Kipling and Cable and Thomas Nelson Page. Few indeed have surpassed him in the mechanics of this most difficult of arts. According to his own belief, the form is an American product ... Harte has described the genesis of his own art. It sprang from the Western humor and was developed by the circumstances that surrounded him. Many of his short stories are models. They contain not a superfluous word, they handle a single incident with grapic power, they close without moral or comment. The form came as a natural evolution from his limitations and powers. With him the story must of necessity be brief.... Bret Harte was the artist of impulse, the painter of single burning moments, the flashlight photographer who caught in lurid detail one dramatic episode in the life of a man or a community and left the rest in darkness.”[4]

Harte’s humor is mostly “Western humor” There is not always uproarious merriment, but there is a constant background of humor. I know of no more amusing scene in American literature than that in the courtroom when the Colonel gives his version of the deacon’s method of signaling to the widow in Harte’s story included in the present volume, _Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff_. Here is part of it:

True to the instructions she had received from him, her lips part in the musical utterance (the Colonel lowered his voice in a faint falsetto, presumably in fond imitation of his fair client) “Kerree!” Instantly the night becomes resonant with the impassioned reply (the Colonel here lifted his voice in stentorian tones), “Kerrow!” Again, as he passes, rises the soft “Kerree!”; again, as his form is lost in the distance, comes back the deep “Kerrow!”

While Harte’s stories all have in them a certain element or background of humor, yet perhaps the majority of them are chiefly romantic or dramatic even more than they are humorous.

Among the best of his short stories may be mentioned: _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ (August, 1868, _Overland_), _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_ (January, 1869, _Overland_), _Tennessee’s Partner_ (October, 1869, _Overland_), _Brown of Calaveras_ (March, 1870, _Overland_), _Flip: a California Romance_ (in _Flip, and Other Stories_, 1882), _Left Out on Lone Star Mountain_ (January, 1884, _Longman’s_), _An Ingenue of the Sierras_ (July, 1894, _McClure’s_), _The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s_ (in _The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and Other Stories_, 1894), _Chu Chu_ (in _The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and Other Stories_, 1894), _The Man and the Mountain_ (in _The Ancestors of Peter Atherly, and Other Tales_, 1897), _Salomy Jane’s Kiss_ (in _Stories in Light and Shadow_, 1898), _The Youngest Miss Piper_ (February, 1900, _Leslie’s Monthly_), _Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff_ (March, 1901, _Harper’s_), _A Mercury of the Foothills_ (July, 1901, _Cosmopolitan_), _Lanty Foster’s Mistake_ (December, 1901, _New England_), _An Ali Baba of the Sierras_ (January 4, 1902, _Saturday Evening Post_), and _Dick Boyle’s Business Card_ (in _Trent’s Trust, and Other Stories_, 1903). Among his notable collections of stories are: _The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches_ (1870), _Flip, and Other Stories_ (1882), _On the Frontier_ (1884), _Colonel Starbottle’s Client, and Some Other People_ (1892), _A Protégé of Jack Hamlin’s, and Other Stories_ (1894), _The Bell-Ringer of Angel’s, and Other Stories_ (1894), _The Ancestors of Peter Atherly, and Other Tales_ (1897), _Openings in the Old Trail_ (1902), and _Trent’s Trust, and Other Stories_ (1903). The titles and makeup of several of his collections were changed when they came to be arranged in the complete edition of his works.[5]

Henry Cuyler Bunner (1855–1896) is one of the humorous geniuses of American literature. He is equally at home in clever verse or the brief short story. Prof. Fred Lewis Pattee has summed up his achievement as follows: “Another [than Stockton] who did much to advance the short story toward the mechanical perfection it had attained to at the close of the century was Henry Cuyler Bunner, editor of _Puck_ and creator of some of the most exquisite _vers de société_ of the period. The title of one of his collections, _Made in France: French Tales Retold with a U.S. Twist_ (1893), forms an introduction to his fiction. Not that he was an imitator; few have been more original or have put more of their own personality into their work. His genius was Gallic. Like Aldrich, he approached the short story from the fastidious standpoint of the lyric poet. With him, as with Aldrich, art was a matter of exquisite touches, of infinite compression, of almost imperceptible shadings. The lurid splashes and the heavy emphasis of the local colorists offended his sensitive taste: he would work with suggestion, with microscopic focussings, and always with dignity and elegance. He was more American than Henry James, more even than Aldrich. He chose always distinctively American subjects—New York City was his favorite theme—and his work had more depth of soul than Stockton’s or Aldrich’s. The story may be trivial, a mere expanded anecdote, yet it is sure to be so vitally treated that, like Maupassant’s work, it grips and remains, and, what is more, it lifts and chastens or explains. It may be said with assurance that _Short Sixes_ marks one of the high places which have been attained by the American short story.”[6]

Among Bunner’s best stories are: _Love in Old Cloathes_ (September, 1883, _Century), A Successful Failure_ (July, 1887, _Puck_), _The Love-Letters of Smith_ (July 23, 1890, _Puck_) _The Nice People_ (July 30, 1890, _Puck_), _The Nine Cent-Girls_ (August 13, 1890, _Puck_), _The Two Churches of ’Quawket_ (August 27, 1890, _Puck_), _A Round-Up_ (September 10, 1890, _Puck_), _A Sisterly Scheme_ (September 24, 1890, _Puck_), _Our Aromatic Uncle_ (August, 1895, _Scribner’s_), _The Time-Table Test_ (in _The Suburban Sage_, 1896). He collaborated with Prof. Brander Matthews in several stories, notably in _The Documents in the Case_ (Sept., 1879, _Scribner’s Monthly_). His best collections are: _Short Sixes: Stories to be Read While the Candle Burns_ (1891), _More Short Sixes_ (1894), and _Love in Old Cloathes, and Other Stories_ (1896).

After Poe and Hawthorne almost the first author in America to make a vertiginous impression by his short stories was Bret Harte. The wide and sudden popularity he attained by the publication of his two short stories, _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ (1868) and _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_ (1869), has already been noted.[7] But one story just before Harte that astonished the fiction audience with its power and art was Harriet Prescott Spofford’s (1835– ) _The Amber Gods_ (January and February, 1860, Atlantic), with its startling ending, “I must have died at ten minutes past one.” After Harte the next story to make a great sensation was Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s _Marjorie Daw_ (April, 1873, _Atlantic_), a story with a surprise at the end, as had been his _A Struggle for Life_ (July, 1867, _Atlantic_), although it was only _Marjorie Daw_ that attracted much attention at the time. Then came George Washington Cable’s (1844– ) “_Posson Jone’_,” (April 1, 1876, _Appleton’s Journal_) and a little later Charles Egbert Craddock’s (1850– ) _The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove_ (May, 1878, _Atlantic_) and _The Star in the Valley_ (November, 1878, _Atlantic_). But the work of Cable and Craddock, though of sterling worth, won its way gradually. Even Edward Everett Hale’s (1822–1909) _My Double; and How He Undid Me_ (September, 1859, _Atlantic_) and _The Man Without a Country_ (December, 1863, _Atlantic_) had fallen comparatively still-born. The truly astounding short story successes, after Poe and Hawthorne, then, were Spofford, Bret Harte and Aldrich. Next came Frank Richard Stockton (1834–1902). “The interest created by the appearance of _Marjorie Daw_,” says Prof. Pattee, “was mild compared with that accorded to Frank R. Stockton’s _The Lady or the Tiger?_ (1884). Stockton had not the technique of Aldrich nor his naturalness and ease. Certainly he had not his atmosphere of the _beau monde_ and his grace of style, but in whimsicality and unexpectedness and in that subtle art that makes the obviously impossible seem perfectly plausible and commonplace he surpassed not only him but Edward Everett Hale and all others. After Stockton and _The Lady or the Tiger?_ it was realized even by the uncritical that short story writing had become a subtle art and that the master of its subtleties had his reader at his mercy.”[8] The publication of Stockton’s short stories covers a period of over forty years, from _Mahala’s Drive_ (November, 1868, _Lippincott’s_) to _The Trouble She Caused When She Kissed_ (December, 1911, _Ladies’ Home Journal_), published nine years after his death. Among the more notable of his stories may be mentioned: _The Transferred Ghost_ (May, 1882, _Century_), _The Lady or the Tiger?_ (November, 1882, _Century_), _The Reversible Landscape_ (July, 1884, _Century_), _The Remarkable Wreck of the “Thomas Hyke”_ (August, 1884, _Century_), _“His Wife’s Deceased Sister”_ (January, 1884, _Century_), _A Tale of Negative Gravity_ (December, 1884, _Century_), _The Christmas Wreck_ (in _The Christmas Wreck, and Other Stories_, 1886), _Amos Kilbright_ (in _Amos Kilbright, His Adscititious Experiences, with Other Stories_, 1888), _Asaph_ (May, 1892, _Cosmopolitan_), _My Terminal Moraine_ (April 26, 1892, Collier’s _Once a Week Library_), _The Magic Egg_ (June, 1894, _Century_), _The Buller-Podington Compact_ (August, 1897, _Scribner’s_), and _The Widow’s Cruise_ (in _A Story-Teller’s Pack_, 1897). Most of his best work was gathered into the collections: _The Lady or the Tiger?, and Other Stories_ (1884), _The Bee-Man of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales_ (1887), _Amos Kilbright, His Adscititious Experiences, with Other Stories_ (1888), _The Clocks of Rondaine, and Other Stories_ (1892), _A Chosen Few_ (1895), _A Story-Teller’s Pack_ (1897), and _The Queen’s Museum, and Other Fanciful Tales_ (1906).

After Stockton and Bunner come O. Henry (1862–1910) and Jack London (1876–1916), apostles of the burly and vigorous in fiction. Beside or above them stand Henry James (1843–1916)—although he belongs to an earlier period as well—Edith Wharton (1862– ), Alice Brown (1857– ), Margaret Wade Deland (1857– ), and Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879– ), practitioners in all that O. Henry and London are not, of the finer fields, the more subtle nuances of modern life. With O. Henry and London, though perhaps less noteworthy, are to be grouped George Randolph Chester (1869– ) and Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb (1876– ). Then, standing rather each by himself, are Melville Davisson Post (1871– ), a master of psychological mystery stories, and Wilbur Daniel Steele (1886– ), whose work it is hard to classify. These ten names represent much that is best in American short story production since the beginning of the twentieth century (1900). Not all are notable for humor; but inasmuch as any consideration of the American humorous short story cannot be wholly dissociated from a consideration of the American short story in general, it has seemed not amiss to mention these authors here. Although Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) lived on into the twentieth century and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1862– ) is still with us, the best and most typical work of these two writers belongs in the last two decades of the previous century. To an earlier period also belong Charles Egbert Craddock (1850– ), George Washington Cable (1844– ), Thomas Nelson Page (1853– ), Constance Fenimore Woolson (1848–1894), Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835– ), Hamlin Garland (1860– ), Ambrose Bierce (1842–?), Rose Terry Cooke (1827–1892), and Kate Chopin (1851–1904).

“O. Henry” was the pen name adopted by William Sydney Porter. He began his short story career by contributing _Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking_ to _McClure’s Magazine_ in 1899. He followed it with many stories dealing with Western and South-and Central-American life, and later came most of his stories of the life of New York City, in which field lies most of his best work. He contributed more stories to the _New York World_ than to any other one publication—as if the stories of the author who later came to be hailed as “the American Maupassant” were not good enough for the “leading” magazines but fit only for the sensation-loving public of the Sunday papers! His first published story that showed distinct strength was perhaps _A Blackjack Bargainer_ (August, 1901, _Munsey’s_). He followed this with such masterly stories as: _The Duplicity of Hargraves_ (February, 1902, _Junior Munsey_), _The Marionettes_ (April, 1902, _Black Cat_), _A Retrieved Reformation_ (April, 1903, _Cosmopolitan_), _The Guardian of the Accolade_ (May, 1903, _Cosmopolitan_), _The Enchanted Kiss_ (February, 1904, _Metropolitan_), _The Furnished Room_ (August 14, 1904, _New York World_), _An Unfinished Story_ (August, 1905, _McClure’s_), _The Count and the Wedding Guest_ (October 8, 1905, _New York World_), _The Gift of the Magi_ (December 10, 1905, _New York World_), _The Trimmed Lamp_ (August, 1906, _McClure’s_), _Phoebe_ (November, 1907, _Everybody’s_), _The Hiding of Black Bill_ (October, 1908, _Everybody’s_), _No Story_ (June, 1909, _Metropolitan_), _A Municipal Report_ (November, 1909, _Hampton’s_), _A Service of Love_ (in _The Four Million_, 1909), _The Pendulum_ (in _The Trimmed Lamp_, 1910), _Brickdust Row_ (in _The Trimmed Lamp_, 1910), and _The Assessor of Success_ (in _The Trimmed Lamp_, 1910). Among O. Henry’s best volumes of short stories are: _The Four Million_ (1909), _Options_ (1909), _Roads of Destiny_ (1909), _The Trimmed Lamp_ (1910), _Strictly Business: More Stories of the Four Million_ (1910), _Whirligigs_ (1910), and _Sixes and Sevens_ (1911).

“Nowhere is there anything just like them. In his best work—and his tales of the great metropolis are his best—he is unique. The soul of his art is unexpectedness. Humor at every turn there is, and sentiment and philosophy and surprise. One never may be sure of himself. The end is always a sensation. No foresight may predict it, and the sensation always is genuine. Whatever else O. Henry was, he was an artist, a master of plot and diction, a genuine humorist, and a philosopher. His weakness lay in the very nature of his art. He was an entertainer bent only on amusing and surprising his reader. Everywhere brilliancy, but too often it is joined to cheapness; art, yet art merging swiftly into caricature. Like Harte, he cannot be trusted. Both writers on the whole may be said to have lowered the standards of American literature, since both worked in the surface of life with theatric intent and always without moral background, O. Henry moves, but he never lifts. All is fortissimo; he slaps the reader on the back and laughs loudly as if he were in a bar-room. His characters, with few exceptions, are extremes, caricatures. Even his shop girls, in the limning of whom he did his best work, are not really individuals; rather are they types, symbols. His work was literary vaudeville, brilliant, highly amusing, and yet vaudeville.”[9] _The Duplicity of Hargraves_, the story by O. Henry given in this volume, is free from most of his defects. It has a blend of humor and pathos that puts it on a plane of universal appeal.

George Randolph Chester (1869– ) gained distinction by creating the genial modern business man of American literature who is not content to “get rich quick” through the ordinary channels. Need I say that I refer to that amazing compound of likeableness and sharp practices, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford? The story of his included in this volume, _Bargain Day at Tutt House_ (June, 1905, _McClure’s_), was nearly his first story; only two others, which came out in _The Saturday Evening Post_ in 1903 and 1904, preceded it. Its breathless dramatic action is well balanced by humor. Other stories of his deserving of special mention are: _A Corner in Farmers_ (February, 29, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _A Fortune in Smoke_ (March 14, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Easy Money_ (November 14, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _The Triple Cross_ (December 5, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Spoiling the Egyptians_ (December 26, 1908, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Whipsawed!_ (January 16, 1909, _Saturday Evening Post_), _The Bubble Bank_ (January 30 and February 6, 1909, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Straight Business_ (February 27, 1909, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Sam Turner: a Business Man’s Love Story_ (March 26, April 2 and 9, 1910, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Fundamental Justice_ (July 25, 1914, _Saturday Evening Post_), _A Scropper Patcher_ (October, 1916, _Everybody’s_), and _Jolly Bachelors_ (February, 1918, _Cosmopolitan_). His best collections are: _Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford_ (1908), _Young Wallingford_ (1910), _Wallingford in His Prime_ (1913), and _Wallingford and Blackie Daw_ (1913). It is often difficult to find in his books short stories that one may be looking for, for the reason that the titles of the individual stories have been removed in order to make the books look like novels subdivided into chapters.

Grace MacGowan Cooke (1863– ) is a writer all of whose work has interest and perdurable stuff in it, but few are the authors whose achievements in the American short story stand out as a whole. In _A Call_ (August, 1906, _Harper’s_) she surpasses herself and is not perhaps herself surpassed by any of the humorous short stories that have come to the fore so far in America in the twentieth century. The story is no less delightful in its fidelity to fact and understanding of young human nature than in its relish of humor. Some of her stories deserving of special mention are: _The Capture of Andy Proudfoot_ (June, 1904, _Harper’s_), _In the Strength of the Hills_ (December, 1905, _Metropolitan_), _The Machinations of Ocoee Gallantine_ (April, 1906, _Century_), _A Call_ (August, 1906, _Harper’s_), _Scott Bohannon’s Bond _(May 4, 1907, _Collier’s_), and _A Clean Shave_ (November, 1912, _Century_). Her best short stories do not seem to have been collected in volumes as yet, although she has had several notable long works of fiction published, such as _The Power and the Glory_ (1910), and several good juveniles.