Short Stories of Various Types

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Transcriber's Note:

This text contains both footnotes and endnotes.

The three footnotes are marked with an upper case letter
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The endnotes are marked with both a page number and a
note number (i.e., [126-1]).

Merrill's English Texts

SHORT STORIES OF VARIOUS TYPES

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by

LAURA F. FRECK,
Head of the English Department in the High School, Jamestown, New York

[Illustration: JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE]

Charles E. Merrill Company
New York and Chicago

Merrill's English Texts

This series of books includes in complete editions those masterpieces
of English Literature that are best adapted for the use of schools and
colleges. The editors of the several volumes are chosen for their
special qualifications in connection with the texts issued under their
individual supervision, but familiarity with the practical needs of the
classroom, no less than sound scholarship, characterizes the editing of
every book in the series.

In connection with each text, the editor has provided a critical and
historical introduction, including a sketch of the life of the author
and his relation to the thought of his time, critical opinions of the
work in question chosen from the great body of English criticism, and,
where possible, a portrait of the author. Ample explanatory notes of
such passages in the text as call for special attention are supplied,
but irrelevant annotation and explanations of the obvious are rigidly
excluded.

CHARLES E. MERRILL COMPANY

Copyright, 1920
by Charles E. Merrill Co.

TO THE TEACHER

These stories have been chosen from authors of varied style and
nationalities for use in high schools. The editor has had especially in
mind students of the first year of the high school or the last year of
the junior high school. The plots are of various types and appeal to
the particular interests and awakening experiences of young readers.
For instance, there will be found among these tales the detective story
by the inimitable Conan Doyle; the true story of adventure, with an
animal for the central figure, by Katherine Mayo; the fanciful story by
the great stylist Hawthorne; tales of humor or pathos; of simple human
love; of character; of nature; of realism; and of idealism. The
settings give glimpses of the far West, the middle West, the East, of
several foreign countries, of great cities, of little villages, and of
the open country.

Each story should be read for the first time at a single sitting so
that the pupil's mind may receive the single dramatic effect in its
unity of impression as the author desired, and more especially that the
pupil may enjoy the story first of all as a story, not as a lesson. The
pupil of this age, however, will not arrive at the other desirable
points to be gained unless he then studies each story with the help of
the study questions, of the related biographical sketch, and of the
introductory notes, as the teacher feels they are needed for the closer
study of the particular story.

The stories may be studied happily in connection with the student's
composition work. For example, when he has read an adventure story and
his mind is stirred by it, why not assign for his next composition, a
story of an adventure in which he has been interested or has figured?
The mechanics of composition, moreover, are more interestingly learned
in connection with an admired author's work.

It is to be hoped that the students may be led to read other stories by
the same and by different authors. A supplementary list of short
stories has been added to the book for this purpose.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgment for permission to use the stories printed in this book
is gratefully made to Doubleday, Page and Company for "The Gift of the
Magi" from _Stories of the Four Million_ by O. Henry; to Hamlin Garland
for "A Camping Trip" from _Boy Life on the Prairie_, published by
Harper and Brothers; to Henry Holt and Company for "A Thread without a
Knot" from _The Real Motive_, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher; to Charles
Scribner's Sons for "Friends" from _Little Aliens_ by Myra Kelly, and
for the story, "American, Sir," by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews; to
Booth Tarkington for "A Reward of Merit" from _Penrod and Sam_. The
stories by Katherine Mayo, Bret Harte, and Nathaniel Hawthorne are used
by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin
Company, the authorized publishers.

Special acknowledgment should be made to Mr. Garland for so kindly
revising the selection from _Boy Life on the Prairie_, to meet our
needs; and to Mr. Carlson for the translation from the Swedish of Miss
Lagerloef's story.

CONTENTS

Page

Introduction 7
I. O. Henry: The Gift of the Magi 11
II. Booth Tarkington: A Reward of Merit 19
III. Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews: "American, Sir!" 48
IV. Katherine Mayo: John G. 68
V. Myra Kelly: Friends 77
VI. Hamlin Garland: A Camping Trip 97
VII. Dorothy Canfield Fisher: A Thread Without a Knot 114
VIII. Francis Bret Harte: Chu Chu 141
IX. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Feathertop 173
X. Arthur Conan Doyle: The Red-Headed League 203
XI. James Matthew Barrie: The Inconsiderate Waiter 238
XII. Alphonse Daudet: The Siege of Berlin 266
XIII. Selma Lagerloef: The Silver Mine 276
Notes 295
Suggested Reading List of Short Stories 317
Suggestions for Study 321

INTRODUCTION

The Short Story. In the rush of modern life, particularly in
America, the short story has come to be the most popular type of
fiction. Just as the quickly seen, low-priced moving picture show is
taking the place of the drama, with the average person, so the short
stories that are found so plentifully in the numerous periodicals of
the day are supplanting the novel.

The short story may be read at a single sitting. It is a distinct type
of literature; that is, it is not just a novel made short or condensed;
it is in its inner plan of a wholly different nature. It relates only
some single important incident or a closely related series of events,
taking place usually in a short space of time, and acted out by a
single chief character. It is like a cross section of life, however,
from which one may judge much of the earlier as well as the later life
of the character.

Its History. The idea of the short story is a decidedly modern
conception. It was in the first half of the last century that Edgar
Allan Poe worked out the idea that the short story should create a
single effect. In his story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," for
example, the single effect is a feeling of horror. In the first
sentence of the story he begins to create this effect by words that
suggest to the reader's imagination gloom and foreboding. This he
consciously carries out just as an artist creates the picture of his
dreams with many skillful strokes of his brush. Poe gave attention also
to compressing all the details of the plot of the story instead of
expanding them as in a long story or novel. He believed, too, that the
plot should be original or else worked out in some new way. The single
incident given, moreover, should reveal to the imagination of the
reader the entire life of the chief character. Almost at the same time,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, with a less conscious effort to create a single
effect, based his tales upon the same ideas, with a tendency towards
romance.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Guy de Maupassant, a
French author without acquaintance with the work of the American
writers, conceived the same idea of the short story, adding to it the
quality of dramatic effect; that is, the idea that the single main
incident should appeal to the imagination of the reader just as if it
were a little play presented to him.

Bret Harte followed in this country with short stories that brought
out, less precisely, the same idea of the short story, with the
addition of local color, the atmosphere of California and the West.

Rudyard Kipling, who became a master of the technique of the short
story in England, has colored his stories with the atmosphere of India
and the far East, while O. Henry, the American master, has given us
character types of the big cities, particularly of New York.

Its Composition. You, no doubt, have written stories for your
composition work, but so far they have probably been chronological
narratives; that is, stories told, as the newspapers tell them, by
relating a series of events in the order of time. The real short story,
has, like the novel, a plot. The word _plot_ here means the systematic
plan or pattern into which the author weaves the events of the story up
to some finishing point of intense interest or of great importance to
the story. This vital part of the narrative is called the _climax_ or
crucial point. If you note the pattern or design in wall paper, carpet,
or dress ornament, you will see that all the threads or lines are
usually worked together to form a harmonious whole, but there is some
special center of the design toward which everything works. In the
short story, as soon as the author arrives at the crucial point he is
through, often having no other conclusion. This ending is so important
that it must always be thought out or planned for from the very
beginning. This is true even in a surprise ending, such as O. Henry
delights in.

Unlike the novel, the short story works its plot out in some single
main incident, which is usually acted out by one chief character in a
short space of time, and all but the necessary details are omitted.
Thus the short story, which is read in a brief time, has a better
opportunity than the novel to produce a complete unity of effect upon
the mind of the reader, such as the effect of horror in Poe's "The Fall
of the House of Usher."

The short story consists of setting, characterization, and narrative.
Any one of these may be emphasized more than the other two. To
illustrate from the stories included in this book: Mr. Garland has
emphasized setting, or time, place, and atmosphere, in "The Camping
Trip." That is, the greatest interest in the story lies in the
beautiful background of the out-of-doors in Iowa in the month of
June. In "Friends," on the other hand, Myra Kelly has emphasized
characterization, for Mrs. Mowgelewsky, Morris, and Miss Bailey present
the real interest of the story. In "The Red-Headed League" by Conan
Doyle the attention centers upon the action.

The technical details of the short story may be summed up and made
clearer to you by illustrating them from the first story given in this
collection, "The Gift of the Magi." The story is "set" in an
eight-dollar-a-week apartment in New York City on the day before
Christmas of some recent year, in an atmosphere of poverty, but a
poverty made radiant by unselfish love. The plot of one main
incident--Della's sacrifice of her hair in order to get a Christmas
present for her husband--takes place in the short space of a few hours,
and works out to a half-humorous, half-pathetic climax, when Della and
Jim display their Christmas gifts for each other. This story has a
conclusion of one paragraph in length where the author reflects upon
what makes a real Christmas giver.

This is the skeleton of the story, but when you think it over, you will
realize that the real charm and interest for you lay in something that
the genius and style of the writer infused into this framework of the
story.

Suggestions. In the composition work that you do during the
weeks that you are reading the short stories in this volume would it
not be interesting to you to try to write stories with little plots
that lead up to some high point of interest, stories of a single main
incident or a closely related series of events covering a short space
of time?

You will find that the stories in this collection are of different
types with settings that take you in imagination all over our own
country and into foreign lands. Try writing a story with a surprise
ending like "The Gift of the Magi," a character story with the theme of
unselfish love, and its setting in a big city. Again, "John G," the
story of adventure with an animal for the hero, might suggest to you an
adventuresome incident in your own experience. If you have a vivid
imagination, it might be interesting to write a fanciful story like
"Feathertop." All of you have heard of true and thrilling incidents of
the recent Great War. Try to weave one into a good war story as did
Daudet or Mrs. Andrews. Almost every young person loves nature or the
open country. After you have read Mr. Garland's, "The Camping Trip,"
see how well you can tell a story of your own experience in the
out-of-doors. Or, best of all, see if you can equal the great Conan
Doyle in a detective story.

With the help of the biographical sketches and study notes, see if you
can classify, as types, the stories that have not been classified in
the preceding paragraph.

SHORT STORIES

O. HENRY

The Gift of the Magi[11-1]

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it
was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the
grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned
with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing
implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven
cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little
couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection
that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first
stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8
per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had
that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go,
and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.
Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of
prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when
the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked
blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a
modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came
home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged
by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della.
Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended her cheeks with the powder rag. She
stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray
fence in a gray backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had
only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every
penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week
doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They
always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy
hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine
and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy
of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you
have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person
may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal
strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being
slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her
eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its
full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which
they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been
his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the
Queen of Sheba[13-1] lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would
have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to
depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the
janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would
have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck
at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like
a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself
almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and
quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still where a tear or
two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl
of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she
fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme. Sofronie, Hair Goods of All
Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting.
Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at
the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practiced hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.
There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all
of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by
meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even
worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be
Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to
both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried
home with the eighty-seven cents. With that chain on his watch Jim
might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the
watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old
leather strap he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence
and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went
to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which
is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny close-lying curls
that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at
her reflection in the mirror, long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a
second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl.
But what could I do--Oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven
cents?"

At seven o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back
of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on
the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she
heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent
prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered:
"Please, God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and
very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened
with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of
quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in
them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger,
nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments
that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with
that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair
cut off and sold it because I couldn't live through Christmas without
giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I
just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas,'
Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice--what a beautiful,
nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim laboriously, as if he had not
arrived at that patent fact yet, even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well,
anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and
gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you.
Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden
serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall
I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della.
For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some
inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or
a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit
would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts but
that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the
table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there
is anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could
make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you
may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an
ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to
hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of
all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della
had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure
tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the
beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her
heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of
possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have
adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up
with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, Oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him
eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash
with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have
to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I
want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hand
under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a
while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get
the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought
gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving
Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones,
possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And
here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two
foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other
the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise
of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were
the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi.

BOOTH TARKINGTON

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