The Best Short Stories of 1919 | Page 5

Rosenblatt, Richard Matthews
Hallet, Wilbur Daniel Steele, and Arthur Johnson, so it is my wish to
dedicate this year the best that I have found in the American magazines
as the fruit of my labors to Anzia Yezierska, whose story, "Fat of the
Land", seems to me perhaps the finest imaginative contribution to the
short story made by an American artist this year.
EDWARD J. O'BRIEN.

OXFORD, ENGLAND, October 29, 1919.

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1919
NOTE.--The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not
intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the
arrangement is alphabetical by authors.

THE KITCHEN GODS[2]
[Note 2: Copyright, 1919, by The Century Company. Copyright, 1920,
by Gulielma Fell Alsop.]
BY GULIELMA FELL ALSOP
From The Century
The lilies bloomed that day. Out in the courtyard, in their fantastic
green-dragoned pots, one by one the tiny, ethereal petals opened.
Dong-Yung went rapturously among them, stooping low to inhale their
faint fragrance. The square courtyard, guarded on three sides by the
wings of the house, facing the windowless blank wall on the fourth,
was mottled with sunlight. Just this side of the wall a black shadow, as
straight and opaque as the wall itself, banded the court with darkness;
but on the hither side, where the lilies bloomed and Dong-Yung moved
among them, lay glittering, yellow sunlight. The little box of a house
where the gate-keeper lived made a bulge in the uniform blackness of
the wall and its shadow. The two tall poles, with the upturned baskets,
the devil-catchers, rose like flagstaffs from both sides of the door. A
huge china griffon stood at the right of the gate. From beyond the wall
came the sounds of early morning--the click of wooden sandals on
cobbled streets and the panting cries of the coolies bringing in fresh
vegetables or carrying back to the denuded land the refuse of the city.
The gate-keeper was awake, brushing out his house with a broom of
twigs. He was quite bald, and the top of his head was as tanned and

brown as the legs of small summer children.
"Good morning, Honorable One," he called. "It is a good omen. The
lilies have opened."
An amah, blue-trousered, blue-jacketed, blue-aproned, cluttered across
the courtyard with two pails of steaming water.
"Good morning, Honorable One. The water for the great wife is hot and
heavy." She dropped her buckets, the water splashing over in runnels
and puddles at her feet, and stooped to smell the lilies. "It is an
auspicious day."
From the casement-window in the right balcony a voice called:
"Thou dunce! Here I am waiting already half the day. Quicker!
quicker!"
It sounded elderly and querulous, a voice accustomed to be obeyed and
to dominate. The great wife's face appeared a moment at the casement.
Her eyes swept over the courtyard scene--over the blooming lilies, and
Dong-Yung standing among them.
"Behold the small wife, cursed of the gods!" she cried in her high, shrill
voice. "Not even a girl can she bear her master. May she eat bitterness
all her days!"
The amah shouldered the steaming buckets and splashed across the
bare boards of the ancestral hall beyond.
"The great wife is angry," murmured the gate-keeper. "Oh, Honorable
One, shall I admit the flower-girl? She has fresh orchids."
Dong-Yung nodded. The flower-girl came slowly in under the guarded
gateway. She was a country child, with brown cheeks and merry eyes.
Her shallow basket was steadied by a ribbon over one shoulder, and
caught between an arm and a swaying hip. In the flat, round basket, on
green little leaves, lay the wired perfumed orchids.

"How many? It is an auspicious day. See, the lilies have bloomed. One
for the hair and two for the buttonholes. They smell sweet as the breath
of heaven itself."
Dong-Yung smiled as the flower-girl stuck one of the fragrant, fragile,
green-striped orchids in her hair, and hung two others, caught on
delicate loops of wire, on the jade studs of her jacket, buttoned on the
right shoulder.
"Ah, you are beautiful-come-death!" said the flower-girl. "Great
happiness be thine!"
"Even a small wife can be happy at times." Dong-Yung took out a little
woven purse, and paid over two coppers apiece to the flower-girl.
At the gate the girl and the gate-keeper fell a-talking.
"Is the morning rice ready?" called a man's voice from the room
behind.
Dong-Yung turned quickly. Her whole face changed. It had been
smiling and pleased before at the sight of the faint, white lily-petals and
the sunlight on her feet and the fragrance of the orchids in her hair; but
now it was lit with an inner radiance.
"My beloved Master!" Dong-Yung made a little instinctive gesture
toward the approaching man, which in a second was