The Best Short Stories of 1915 | Page 6

We have scarcely begun to build our democracy of letters.
Because an American publisher has been found who shares my faith in the democratic future of the American short story as something by no means ephemeral, this year-book of American fiction is assured of annual publication for several years. It is my wish annually to dedicate whatever there may be of faith and hope in each volume to the writer of short stories whose work during the year has brought to me the most definite message of idealism. It is accordingly my privilege this year to associate the present volume with the name of Benjamin Rosenblatt, who has contributed in "Zelig" a noble addition to American literature.
EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
SOUTH YARMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS Twelfth Night, 1916

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915

THE WATER-HOLE[1]
BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT
From Scribner's Magazine
[1] Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1916, by Maxwell Struthers Burt.
Some men are like the twang of a bow-string. Hardy was like that--short, lithe, sunburned, vivid. Into the lives of Jarrick, Hill, and myself, old classmates of his, he came and went in the fashion of one of those queer winds that on a sultry day in summer blow unexpectedly up a city street out of nowhere. His comings excited us; his goings left us refreshed and a little vaguely discontented. So many people are gray. Hardy gave one a shock of color, as do the deserts and the mountains he inhabited. It was not particularly what he said--he didn't talk much--it was his appearance, his direct, a trifle fierce, gestures, the sense of mysterious lands that pervaded him. One never knew when he was coming to New York and one never knew how long he was going to stay; he just appeared, was very busy with mining companies for a while, sat about clubs in the late afternoon, and then, one day, he was gone.
Sometimes he came twice in a year; oftener, not for two or three years at a stretch. When he did come we gave him a dinner--that is, Jarrick, Hill, and myself. And it was rather an occasion. We would procure a table in the gayest restaurant we could find, near, but not too near, the music--Hill it was who first suggested this as a dramatic bit of incongruity between Hardy and the frequenters of Broadway--and the most exotic food obtainable, for a good part of his time Hardy, we knew, lived upon camp fare. Then we would try to make him tell about his experiences. Usually he wouldn't. Impersonally, he was entertaining about South Africa, about the Caucasus, about Alaska, Mexico, anywhere you care to think; but concretely he might have been an illustrated lecture for all he mentioned himself. He was passionately fond of abstract argument. "Y' see," he would explain, "I don't get half as much of this sort of thing as I want. Of course, one does run across remarkable people--now, I met a cow-puncher once who knew Keats by heart--but as a rule I deal only with material things, mines and prospects and assays and that sort of thing." Poor chap! I wonder if he thought that we, with our brokering and our writing and our lawyering, dealt much with ideas! I remember one night when we sat up until three discussing the philosophy of prohibition over three bottles of port. I wonder how many other men have done the same thing!
But five years ago--no, it was six--Hardy really told us a real story about himself. Necessarily the occasion is memorable in our recollections. We had dined at Lamb's, and the place was practically empty, for it was long after the theatre hour--only a drowsy waiter here and there, and away over in one corner a young couple who, I suppose, imagined themselves in love. Fancy being in love at Lamb's! We had been discussing, of all things in the world, bravery and conscience and cowardice and original sin, and that sort of business, and there was no question about it that Hardy was enjoying himself hugely. He was leaning upon the table, a coffee-cup between his relaxed brown hands, listening with an eagerness highly complimentary to the banal remarks we had to make upon the subject. "This is talk!" he ejaculated once with a laugh.
Hill, against the combined attack of Jarrick and myself, was maintaining the argument. "There is no such thing as instinctive bravery," he affirmed, for the fifth time at least, "amongst intelligent men. Every one of us is naturally a coward. Of course we are. The more imagination we've got the more we can realize how pleasant life is, after all, and how rotten the adjuncts of sudden death. It's reason that does the trick--reason and tradition. Do you know of any one who is brave when he is alone--except, that is,