The Best American Humorous Short Stories | Page 6

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