Short Stories of Various Types | Page 2

Harper and Brothers; to Henry Holt and Company for "A Thread
without a Knot" from The Real Motive, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher; to
Charles Scribner's Sons for "Friends" from Little Aliens by Myra Kelly,
and for the story, "American, Sir," by Mary Raymond Shipman
Andrews; to Booth Tarkington for "A Reward of Merit" from Penrod
and Sam. The stories by Katherine Mayo, Bret Harte, and Nathaniel
Hawthorne are used by permission of, and by special arrangement with,
Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized publishers.
Special acknowledgment should be made to Mr. Garland for so kindly
revising the selection from Boy Life on the Prairie, to meet our needs;
and to Mr. Carlson for the translation from the Swedish of Miss

Lagerlöf's story.

CONTENTS
Page
Introduction 7 I. O. Henry: The Gift of the Magi 11 II. Booth
Tarkington: A Reward of Merit 19 III. Mary Raymond Shipman
Andrews: "American, Sir!" 48 IV. Katherine Mayo: John G. 68 V.
Myra Kelly: Friends 77 VI. Hamlin Garland: A Camping Trip 97 VII.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher: A Thread Without a Knot 114 VIII. Francis
Bret Harte: Chu Chu 141 IX. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Feathertop 173 X.
Arthur Conan Doyle: The Red-Headed League 203 XI. James Matthew
Barrie: The Inconsiderate Waiter 238 XII. Alphonse Daudet: The Siege
of Berlin 266 XIII. Selma Lagerlöf: The Silver Mine 276 Notes 295
Suggested Reading List of Short Stories 317 Suggestions for Study 321

INTRODUCTION
The Short Story. In the rush of modern life, particularly in America, the
short story has come to be the most popular type of fiction. Just as the
quickly seen, low-priced moving picture show is taking the place of the
drama, with the average person, so the short stories that are found so
plentifully in the numerous periodicals of the day are supplanting the
novel.
The short story may be read at a single sitting. It is a distinct type of
literature; that is, it is not just a novel made short or condensed; it is in
its inner plan of a wholly different nature. It relates only some single
important incident or a closely related series of events, taking place
usually in a short space of time, and acted out by a single chief
character. It is like a cross section of life, however, from which one
may judge much of the earlier as well as the later life of the character.
Its History. The idea of the short story is a decidedly modern

conception. It was in the first half of the last century that Edgar Allan
Poe worked out the idea that the short story should create a single effect.
In his story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," for example, the single
effect is a feeling of horror. In the first sentence of the story he begins
to create this effect by words that suggest to the reader's imagination
gloom and foreboding. This he consciously carries out just as an artist
creates the picture of his dreams with many skillful strokes of his brush.
Poe gave attention also to compressing all the details of the plot of the
story instead of expanding them as in a long story or novel. He believed,
too, that the plot should be original or else worked out in some new
way. The single incident given, moreover, should reveal to the
imagination of the reader the entire life of the chief character. Almost at
the same time, Nathaniel Hawthorne, with a less conscious effort to
create a single effect, based his tales upon the same ideas, with a
tendency towards romance.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Guy de Maupassant, a
French author without acquaintance with the work of the American
writers, conceived the same idea of the short story, adding to it the
quality of dramatic effect; that is, the idea that the single main incident
should appeal to the imagination of the reader just as if it were a little
play presented to him.
Bret Harte followed in this country with short stories that brought out,
less precisely, the same idea of the short story, with the addition of
local color, the atmosphere of California and the West.
Rudyard Kipling, who became a master of the technique of the short
story in England, has colored his stories with the atmosphere of India
and the far East, while O. Henry, the American master, has given us
character types of the big cities, particularly of New York.
Its Composition. You, no doubt, have written stories for your
composition work, but so far they have probably been chronological
narratives; that is, stories told, as the newspapers tell them, by relating
a series of events in the order of time. The real short story, has, like the
novel, a plot. The word plot here means