O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 | Page 5

for marriage
with the marvellous lady of his own era.
"Contact!" is the first story by the author of "My A.E.F." and in its
every line testifies to the vital interest Miss Noyes had and has in the
boys who won the war--whether American, French or English. So
much one would know from a single rapid reading. A critic might
guess that it would have been impossible as a first story if the author
had not lived much abroad, as she has done since she was very much of
a child. At Oxford, or in the home of Gaston Paris, or travelling around
the globe, she received the foundation for the understanding sympathy
which endeared her as "Petite" to her soldier boys. A critic might also
aver that the steady moving forward of the action, joined to the
backward progress, yet both done so surely, could not have been
achieved without years of training. And in this respect the narrative is
little short of being a tour de force. But, as a matter of fact. Miss Noyes
dreamed the whole thing! Her antecedent experience proved greater
than mere technique.

The Committee wish to comment upon the irregularity of the output of
fiction from month to month. May brought forth the greatest number of
good stories, as November reaped the fewest. They wish, also, to
register notice of the continued flexibility of the short story form. "The
Judgment of Vulcan," at one extreme, in some thirteen thousand words
none the less relates a short story; "Alma Mater," at the other,
accomplishes the same end in two thousand. It is a matter of record that
the Committee discovered a number of excellent examples containing
not more than two thirds this latter number, a fact that argues against
the merging of the short story and the novel. Finally, the Committee
believe the fiction of the year 1920 superior to that of 1919.
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, NEW YORK CITY, March 3,
1921.

EACH IN HIS GENERATION
BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT
From _Scribner's Magazine_
Every afternoon at four o'clock, except when the weather was very
bad--autumn, winter, and spring--old Mr. Henry McCain drove up to
the small, discreet, polished front door, in the small, discreet,
fashionable street in which lived fairly old Mrs. Thomas Denby; got out,
went up the white marble steps, rang the bell, and was admitted into the
narrow but charming hall--dim turquoise-blue velvet panelled into the
walls, an etching or two: Whistler, Brangwyn--by a trim parlour-maid.
Ten generations, at least, of trim parlour-maids had opened the door for
Mr. McCain. They had seen the sparkling victoria change, not too
quickly, to a plum-coloured limousine; they had seen Mr. McCain
become perhaps a trifle thinner, the colour in his cheeks become a trifle
more confined and fixed, his white hair grow somewhat sparser, but
beyond that they had seen very little indeed, although, when they had
left Mr. McCain in the drawing-room with the announcement that Mrs.
Denby would be down immediately, and were once again seeking the
back of the house, no doubt their eyebrows, blonde, brunette, or red,
apexed to a questioning angle.
In the manner of youth the parlour-maids had come, worked, fallen in
love and departed, but Mr. McCain, in the manner of increasing age,
had if anything grown more faithful and exact to the moment. If he

were late the fraction of five minutes, one suspected that he regretted it,
that it came near to spoiling his entire afternoon. He was not articulate,
but occasionally he expressed an idea and the most common was that
he "liked his things as he liked them"; his eggs, in other words, boiled
just so long, no more--after sixty years of inner debate on the subject he
had apparently arrived at the conclusion that boiled eggs were the only
kind of eggs permissible--his life punctual and serene. The smallest
manifestation of unexpectedness disturbed him. Obviously that was one
reason why, after a youth not altogether constant, he had become so
utterly constant where Mrs. Denby was concerned. She had a quality of
perenniality, charming and assuring, even to each strand of her delicate
brown hair. Grayness should have been creeping upon her, but it was
not. It was doubtful if Mr. McCain permitted himself, even secretly, to
wonder why. Effects, fastidious and constant, were all he demanded
from life.
This had been going on for twenty years--this afternoon call; this slow
drive afterward in the park; this return by dusk to the shining small
house in the shining small street; the good-by, reticently ardent, as if it
were not fully Mr. McCain's intention to return again in the evening.
Mr. McCain would kiss Mrs. Denby's hand--slim, lovely, with a single
gorgeous sapphire upon the third finger. "Good-by, my dear," he would
say,