O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 | Page 7

three years ago to declare they were "fed up."
Third, Freudian theories have found organic place in the substance of the story. They have not yet found incorporation in many narratives that preserve short story structure, however--although it is within conceivability that the influence may finally burst the mould and create a new--and the Committee agree in demanding both substance and structure as short story essentials.
Finally, the story reflects the changing ideals of a constantly changing age. Not only are these ideals changing because of cross-currents that have their many sources in racial springs far asunder, not only because of contact or conflict between the ideals and cosmic forces dimly apprehended; also they are changing because of the undeniable influence of what Emerson called the Oversoul. The youth of the time is different, as youth is always different. But now and then a sharp cleavage separates the succeeding generations and it separates them now. The youth of England has found interpretation in Clemence Dane's play, "A Bill of Divorcement." In America, the interpretation is only half articulate; but when the incoherent sounds are wholly intelligible, the literature of the short story will have entered, in definite respects, upon a new era.
The Committee of Award wish once again to thank the authors, editors, and publishers whose cooperation makes possible this annual volume and the O. Henry Memorial Prizes.
Blanche Colton Williams.
New York City January 10, 1922

O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1921

THE HEART OF LITTLE SHIKARA
By EDISON MARSHALL
From Everybody's
I
If it hadn't been for a purple moon that came peering up above the dark jungle just at nightfall, it would have been impossible to tell that Little Shikara was at his watch. He was really just the colour of the shadows--a rather pleasant brown--he was very little indeed, and besides, he was standing very, very still. If he was trembling at all, from anticipation and excitement, it was no more than Nahar the tiger trembles as he crouches in ambush. But the moon did show him--peering down through the leaf-clusters of the heavy vines--and shone very softly in his wide-open dark eyes.
And it was a purple moon--no other colour that man could name. It looked almost unreal, like a paper moon painted very badly by a clumsy stage-hand. The jungle-moon quite often has that peculiar purplish tint, most travellers know, but few of them indeed ever try to tell what causes it. This particular moon probed down here and there between the tall bamboos, transformed the jungle--just now waking--into a mystery and a fairyland, glinted on a hard-packed elephant trail that wound away into the thickets, and always came back to shine on the coal-black Oriental eyes of the little boy beside the village gate. It showed him standing very straight and just as tall as his small stature would permit, and looked oddly silvery and strange on his long, dark hair. Little Shikara, son of Khoda Dunnoo, was waiting for the return of a certain idol and demigod who was even now riding home in his howdah from the tiger hunt.
Other of the villagers would be down to meet Warwick Sahib as soon as they heard the shouts of his beaters--but Little Shikara had been waiting almost an hour. Likely, if they had known about it, they would have commented on his badness, because he was notoriously bad, if indeed--as the villagers told each other--he was not actually cursed with evil spirits.
In the first place, he was almost valueless as a herder of buffalo. Three times, when he had been sent with the other boys to watch the herds in their wallows, he had left his post and crept away into the fringe of jungle on what was unquestionably some mission of witchcraft. For small naked brown boys, as a rule, do not go alone and unarmed into the thick bamboos. Too many things can happen to prevent them ever coming out again; too many brown silent ribbons crawl in the grass, or too many yellow, striped creatures, no less lithe, lurk in the thickets. But the strangest thing of all--and the surest sign of witchcraft--was that he had always come safely out again, yet with never any satisfactory explanations as to why he had gone. He had always looked some way very joyful and tremulous--and perhaps even pale if from the nature of things a brown boy ever can look pale. But it was the kind of paleness that one has after a particularly exquisite experience. It was not the dumb, teeth-chattering paleness of fear.
"I saw the sergeant of the jungle," Little Shikara said after one of these excursions. And this made no sense at all.
"There are none of the King's soldiers here," the brown village folk replied to him. "Either thou liest to us, or thine eyes lied to thee.