The Best American Humorous Short Stories | Page 7

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