The Best American Humorous Short Stories | Page 7

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 Aromatic Uncle (August, 1895, Scribner's), The Time-Table Test (in The Suburban Sage, 1896). He collaborated with Prof. Brander Matthews in several stories, notably in The