The Best Short Stories of 1915

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THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915

AND THE

YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY

EDITED BY
EDWARD J. O'BRIEN

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1915, 1916, by The Boston Transcript.

Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, Harper and Brothers, The
Century Company, The Masses Publishing Company, P.F. Collier & Son,
Incorporated, Margaret C. Anderson, Mitchell Kennerley, The Ridgway
Company, Illustrated Sunday Magazine, John T. Frederick, Every Week
Corporation, Boston Daily Advertiser, The Bellman Company, The Outlook
Company, and The Curtis Publishing Company.

Copyright, 1916, by Maxwell Struthers Burt, Donn Byrne, Will Levington
Comfort, William Addison Dwiggins, James Francis Dwyer, Ben Hecht,
Arthur Johnson, Virgil Jordan, Harris Merton Lyon, Walter J. Muilenburg,
Newbold Noyes, Seumas O'Brien, Katharine Metcalf Roof, Benjamin
Rosenblatt, Elsie Singmaster Lewars, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Mary Synon,
and Fannie Hurst.

Copyright, 1916, by Small, Maynard and Company, Incorporated.

Second Printing, June, 1916
Third Printing, October, 1916
Fourth Printing, December, 1916
Fifth Printing, May, 1917

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

* * * * *

TO BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT

* * * * *

BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories in
this volume is made to the following authors, editors, publishers,
and copyright holders:

To Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Maxwell Struthers Burt for
permission to reprint "The Water-Hole," first published in
_Scribner's Magazine_; to Harper and Brothers and Mr. Donn Byrne for
permission to reprint "The Wake," first published in _Harper's
Magazine_; to The Masses Publishing Company and Mr. Will Levington
Comfort for permission to reprint "Chautonville," first published in
_The Masses_; to Mr. William Addison Dwiggins for permission to
reprint "La Derniere Mobilisation;" to P.F. Collier & Son,
Incorporated, Galbraith Welch, and Mr. James Francis Dwyer for
permission to reprint "The Citizen," first published in _Collier's
Weekly_; to Mitchell Kennerley and Mrs. Frances Gregg Wilkinson for
permission to reprint "Whose Dog--?" first published in _The Forum_;
to Miss Margaret C. Anderson and Mr. Ben Hecht for permission to
reprint "Life," first published in _The Little Review_; to the
Century Company and Mr. Arthur Johnson for permission to reprint
"Mr. Eberdeen's House," first published in _The Century Magazine_;
to the Ridgway Company and Mr. Virgil Jordan for permission to
include "Vengeance is Mine!" first published in _Everybody's
Magazine_; to _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_ and Mr. Harris
Merton Lyon for permission to reprint "The Weaver Who Clad the
Summer," first published in _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_; to
Mr. John T. Frederick and Mr. Walter J. Muilenburg for permission to
reprint "Heart of Youth," first published in _The Midland_; to the
Every Week Corporation and Mr. Newbold Noyes for permission to
reprint "The End of the Path," first published in _Every Week_ and
_The Associated Sunday Magazine_; to _The Illustrated Sunday
Magazine_ and Mr. Seumas O'Brien for permission to reprint "The
Whale and the Grass-Hopper," first published in _The Illustrated
Sunday Magazine_; to _The Boston Daily Advertiser_, _The Boston
Evening Record_, and the Newspaper Enterprise Association for
permission to reprint "In Berlin," by Mary Boyle O'Reilly, first
published in _The Boston Daily Advertiser_; to the Century Company
and Miss Katharine Metcalf Roof for permission to reprint "The
Waiting Years," first published in _The Century Magazine_; to The
Bellman Company and Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt for permission to
reprint "Zelig," first published in _The Bellman_; to The Outlook
Company and Mrs. Elsie Singmaster Lewars for permission to include
"The Survivors," first published in _The Outlook_; to Harper and
Brothers and Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele for permission to reprint "The
Yellow Cat," first published in _Harper's Magazine_; to Charles
Scribner's Sons and Miss Mary Synon for permission to reprint "The
Bounty Jumper," first published in _Scribner's Magazine_; and to The
Curtis Publishing Company and Miss Fannie Hurst for permission to
reprint "T.B.," first published in _The Saturday Evening Post_.

Acknowledgments are specially due to _The Boston Evening Transcript_
for permission to reprint the large body of material previously
published in the columns of that paper.

I wish to specially express my gratitude to the following who have
materially assisted by their efforts in making this year-book of American
fiction possible and more complete:

Mr. A.A. Boyden, Mr. Bruce Barton, Mr. Henry A. Bellows, Professor
Albert Frederick Wilson, Mr. Barry Benefield, Mr. Douglas Z. Doty,
Mr. Karl Edwin Harriman, Mr. Edward Frank Allen, Mr. Carl Hovey,
Miss Sonya Levien, Mr. William Griffith, Mr. Arthur T. Vance, Mr.
Mitchell Kennerley, Mr. H.M. Greene, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. J.B.
Carrington, Mr. Hayden Carruth, Mr. Frederic A. Duneka, Mr. Henry J.
Forman, Mr. Gilman Hall, Mr. Charles Hanson Towne, Miss Margaret
Anderson, Mr. Charles Edison, Mr. Guido Bruno, Mr. William Marion
Reedy, Mr. John T. Frederick, Mr. Burton Kline, Miss Dorothea
Lawrance Mann, Miss Katharine Butler, Mr. Thomas H. Uzzell, Mr.
Virgil Jordan, Mrs. Elsie Singmaster Lewars, Mr. Alfred A. Knopf,
Miss Hilda Baker, Mr. William Stanley Braithwaite, and Mr. Francis
J. Hannigan, in charge of the Periodical Department of the Boston
Public Library. To Mr. Hannigan my special gratitude is due. My
ability to find certain back numbers of periodicals which the
publishers were unable to supply is due to his personal helpfulness
and unsparing pains. In fact, his assistance at certain times almost
amounted to collaboration.

I shall be grateful to my readers for corrections and particularly
for suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume.
In particular, I shall welcome the receipt from authors and publishers,
of stories published during 1916 which have qualities of distinction,
and yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice.
For such assistance I shall make due and grateful acknowledgment in
next year's annual.

If I have been guilty of any omissions in these acknowledgments, it is
quite unintentional, and I trust that I shall be absolved for my good
intentions.

E.J.O.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. By the Editor

THE WATER-HOLE. By Maxwell Struthers Burt
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)

THE WAKE. By Donn Byrne
(From _Harper's Magazine_)

CHAUTONVILLE. By Will Levington Comfort
(From _The Masses_)

LA DERNIERE MOBILISATION. By W.A. Dwiggins
(From _The Fabulist_)

THE CITIZEN. By James Francis Dwyer
(From _Collier's Weekly_)

WHOSE DOG--? By Frances Gregg
(From _The Forum_)

LIFE. By Ben Hecht
(From _The Little Review_)

T.B. By Fannie Hurst
(From _The Saturday Evening Post_)

MR. EBERDEEN'S HOUSE. By Arthur Johnson
(From _The Century_)

VENGEANCE IS MINE. By Virgil Jordan
(From _Everybody's Magazine_)

THE WEAVER WHO CLAD THE SUMMER. By Harris Merton Lyon
(From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_)

HEART OF YOUTH. By Walter J. Muilenburg
(From _The Midland_)

THE END OF THE PATH. By Newbold Noyes
(From _Every Week_)

THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER. By Seumas O'Brien
(From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_)

IN BERLIN. By Mary Boyle O'Reilly
(From _The Boston Daily Advertiser_)

THE WAITING YEARS. By Katharine Metcalf Roof
(From _The Century Magazine_)

ZELIG. By Benjamin Rosenblatt
(From _The Bellman_)

THE SURVIVORS. By Elsie Singmaster
(From _The Outlook_)

THE YELLOW CAT. By Wilbur Daniel Steele
(From _Harper's Magazine_)

THE BOUNTY-JUMPER. By Mary Synon
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)

THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY FOR 1914 AND 1915

THE ROLL OF HONOR FOR 1914

THE ROLL OF HONOR FOR 1915

MAGAZINE AVERAGES FOR 1915

INDEX OF SHORT STORIES FOR 1914 AND 1915

INTRODUCTION

In reaffirming the significant position of the American short story as
compared with the English short story, I am more impressed than ever
with the leadership maintained by American artists in this literary
form. Mr. James Stephens has been criticising us for our curiously
negative achievement in novel writing. He has compared the American
novelist with the English novelist and found him wanting. He is
compelled to deny literary distinction to the American novel, and he
makes a sweeping indictment of American fiction in consequence. But
does he know the American short story?

If you turn to the English magazines, you will find a certain form of
_conte_ of narrow range developed to a point of high literary merit in
such a paper as the _Nation_ or the _New Statesman_. But if you look for
short stories in the literary periodicals, you will not find them, and
if you turn to the popular English magazines, you will be amazed at the
cheap and meretricious quality of the English short story.

It would be idle to dispute about the origin of the short story, for
several literatures may claim its birth, but the American short story
has been developed as an art form to the point where it may fairly
claim a sustained superiority, as different in kind as in quality from
the tale or _conte_ of other literatures.

It would be difficult to trace the reasons for its specially healthy
growth in a soil so idly fertilized as our American reading public,
but it is less difficult and far more valuable to trace its development
and changing standards from year to year as the field of its interest
widens and its technique becomes more and more assured and competent.

Accordingly it seems advisable to undertake a study of the American
short story from year to year as it is represented in the American
periodicals which care most to develop its art and its audiences, and
to appraise so far as may be the relative achievement of author and
magazine in the successful fulfilment of this aim.

We have listened to much wailing during the past year about the absence
of all literary qualities in our fiction. We have been judged by
Englishmen and Irishmen who do not know our work and by Americans who
do know it. We have been appraised at our real worth by Mr. Edward
Garnett, who is probably the only English critic competent through
sufficient acquaintance to discuss us. Mr. Owen Wister and Mr. Henry
Sydnor Harrison have discussed us with each other, and bandied names
to and fro rather uncritically. And Mr. Robert Herrick has endeavored
to reassure us kindly and a little wistfully. Mr. Stephens has scolded
us, and Mr. Howells and Mr. Alden have counselled us wisely. And many
others have ventured opinions and offered judgment. The general verdict
against American literature is Guilty! Is this wise? Is this just?

Twelve years ago, if the public had been sufficiently interested,
such a dispute might have arisen about American poetry. If it had
arisen, the jury would probably have shouted "Guilty!" with one voice.
We had no faith in our poetry, and we were afraid of enthusiasm. It was
not good form. One or two poets refused to despair of the situation.
They affirmed their faith in our spiritual and imaginative substance
persistently and in the face of apathy and discouragement. They made
us believe in ourselves, and now American poetry is at the threshold
of a new era. It is more vital than contemporary English poetry.

Has the time not come at last to cease lamenting the pitiful gray
shabbiness of American fiction? We say that we have no faith in it,
and we judge it by the books and stories that we casually read. If
we are writers of fiction ourselves, perhaps we judge it by personal
and temperamental methods and preferences, just as certain groups of
American poets of widely different sympathies judge the poetry of
their contemporaries to-day. Let us affirm our faith anyhow in our
own spiritual substance. Let us believe in our materials and shape
them passionately to a creative purpose. Let us be enthusiastic about
life around us and the work that is being done, and in much less than
twelve years from now a jury of novelists and critics will pronounce
a very different verdict on American fiction from their verdict of
to-day.

During the past year I have read over twenty-two hundred short stories
in a critical spirit, and they have made me lastingly hopeful of our
literary future. A spirit of change is acting on our literature. There
is a fresh living current in the air. The new American spirit in fiction
is typically voiced by such a man as Mr. Lincoln Colcord in a letter
from which I have his permission to quote.

"There are many signs," he writes, "that literature in America stands
at a parting of ways. The technical-commercial method has been fully
exploited, and, I think, found wanting in essential results, although
it is a step toward higher things. The machinery for a great literature
stands ready. The public taste is now being created. Add to this, the
period in our national life: we are coming to our artistic maturity.
Add the profound social transition that was upon us before the war.
And add any factor you may choose for what may come after the war; for
I think that momentous events stand on the threshold of the world.

"The main trouble with the fellows who are writing in America to-day
is that they write too much--or rather, publish too much. A writer
should be very glad to accept a small income for many years; he
should deliberately keep his fortunes within bounds; and take his
time. All this would have been a truism fifty years ago; the machinery
for the other thing didn't exist, and something in the way of a natural
condition kept him in the simple path. But I don't find fault with the
machinery; the wider field and the larger figures are a direct boon to
us. They do, however, impose an added strain upon our sincerity."

I like to believe that the American writer is stiffening himself more
and more to meet this strain. Commercialization has never affected
any literature more than it has affected the American short story
in the past. It is affecting our writing more than ever to-day. But
here and there in quiet places, usually far from great cities, artists
are laboring quietly for a literary ideal, and the leaven of their
achievement is becoming more and more impressive every day. It is
my faith and hope that this annual volume of mine may do something
toward disengaging the honest good from the meretricious mass of
writing with which it is mingled. I find that editors are beginning
to react from the commercialized fiction that prevails to-day. They
are beginning to learn that they are killing the goose which lays the
golden eggs. The commercialized short story writer has less enthusiasm
in writing for editors nowadays. The "movies" have captured him. Why
write stories when scenarios are not only much less exhausting, but
actually more remunerative? The literary tradesman is peddling his wares
in other and wider markets, and the artistic craftsman is welcomed by
the magazines more and more in his place. As Mr. Colcord points out, we
have come at last to the parting of the ways.

I have undertaken to examine the short stories published in American
magazines during 1914 and 1915 and to report upon my findings. As the
most adequate means to this end, I have taken each short story by
itself, and examined it impartially. I have done my best to surrender
myself to the writer's point of view, and granting his choice of
material and interpretation of it in terms of life, have sought to
test it by the double standard of substance and form. Substance is
something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather
than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of
facts in a story only obtain substantial embodiment when the artist's
power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a
living truth. I assume that such a living truth is the artist's
essential object. The first test of a short story, therefore, in
any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling
the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be
known as the test of substance.

But a second test is necessary in this qualitative analysis if a
story is to take high rank above other stories. The test of substance
is the most vital test, to be sure, and if a story survives it, it
has imaginative life. The true artist, however, will seek to shape
this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form,
by skilful selection and arrangement of his material, and by the
most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and
characterization.

The short stories which I have examined in this study have fallen
naturally into four groups. The first group consists of those stories
which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test of substance
or the test of form. These stories are listed in the year-book without
comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group consists of those
stories which may fairly claim to survive either the test of substance
or the test of form. Each of these stories may claim to possess either
distinction of technique alone, or more frequently, I am glad to say,
a persuasive sense of life in them to which a reader responds with
some part of his own experience. Stories included in this group are
indicated in the year-book index by a single asterisk prefixed to the
title. The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater
distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a
second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test
of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are
indicated in the year-book index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.

Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories
which possess, I believe, an even finer distinction--the distinction
of uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven
pattern with a spiritual sincerity so earnest, and a creative belief
so strong, that each of these stories may fairly claim, in my opinion,
a position of some permanence in our literature as a criticism of life.
Stories of such quality are indicated in the year-book index by three
asterisks prefixed to the title, and are also listed in a special
"Roll of Honor." Ninety-three stories published during 1915 are
included in this list, and in compiling it I must repeat that I have
permitted no personal preference or prejudice to influence my judgment
consciously for or against a story. To the titles of certain stories,
however, in this list, an asterisk is prefixed, and this asterisk, I
must confess, reveals in some measure a personal preference. Stories
indicated by this asterisk seem to me not only distinctive, but so
highly distinguished as to necessitate their ultimate preservation
between book covers. It is from this final short list that the stories
reprinted in this volume have been selected.

It has been a point of honor with me not to republish an English story
or a short story whose immediate publication in book form elsewhere
seems likely. I have also made it a rule not to include more than one
story by an individual author in the volume. The general and particular
results of my study will be found explained and carefully detailed in
the supplementary part of the volume. It only remains now to point out
certain passing characteristics of the year for the sake of
chronological completeness.

I suppose there can be no doubt that "Zelig" is by all odds the
most nobly conceived and finely wrought story of the year. It is
a peculiar satisfaction to find again this year, as in 1914, that
the best story is the work of an unknown author. Mr. Rosenblatt's
story is in my opinion even more satisfying as a report of life
than Mr. Conrad Richter's "Brothers of No Kin," which I felt to
be the best story published during 1914. The American public is
indebted to Professor Albert Frederick Wilson, of the New York
University School of Journalism for the discovery and encouragement
of Mr. Rosenblatt's literary genius. Professor Wilson's service to
American literature in this matter should be adequately acknowledged.

The _Bellman_, in which "Zelig" appeared, is remarkable for the
brilliance and power of its fiction. My averages this year show
clearly that its percentage of distinctive stories is nearly double
that of the American weekly which most nearly approaches it. The
quality of the _Bellman's_ poetry is a matter of national knowledge.
It is fully equalled by the _Bellman's_ fiction, which renders it
one of the three or four American periodicals necessary to every
student of our spiritual history.

One new periodical and one new short story writer claim unique attention
this year for their recent achievement and abundant future promise.
A year ago a slender little monthly magazine entitled the _Midland_
was first issued in Iowa City. It attracted very little attention,
and in the course of the year published but ten short stories. It has
been my pleasure and wonder to find in these ten stories the most vital
interpretation in fiction of our national life that many years have been
able to show. Since the most brilliant days of the New England men of
letters, no such group of writers has defined its position with such
assurance and modesty.

One new short story writer has appeared this year whose five published
stories open a new field to fiction and have a human richness of feeling
and imagination rare in our oversophisticated literature. I refer to the
fables of Seumas O'Brien. At first one is struck with their utter
absence of form, and then one realizes that this is a conscious art that
wanders truant over life and imagination. In Seumas O'Brien I believe
that America has found a new humorist of popular sympathies, a rare
observer and philosopher whose very absurdities have a persuasive
philosophy of their own.

The two established writers whose sustained excellence this year is
most impressive are Katharine Fullerton Gerould and Wilbur Daniel
Steele. Lincoln Colcord's two stories show qualities of artistic
conscience reenforcing an imaginative substance so real that another
year or two should suffice for him to take his place with the leaders
of American fiction. I must affirm once more the genuine literary art
of Fannie Hurst. The absolute fidelity of her dialogue to life and its
revealing spirit, not despite, but rather because of the vulgarities
she accepts, seem to me to assure her permanence in her best work.

A rare literary art, not dissimilar in fundamentals, and quite as
marvellously documented, is revealed by Rupert Hughes in his series of
stories in the _Metropolitan Magazine_ this year. In "Michaeleen!
Michaelawn!" he has succeeded greatly. It is a story which it will be
difficult for Americans to forget.

What must have begun as a doubtful experiment and been continued only
because it was a triumphantly demonstrated success has been the serial
publication for the great average American public of my selection of
the best twenty-one stories published in 1914. The _Illustrated Sunday
Magazine_ has evidently justified its daring, and the bold pioneering
of its editor, Mr. Hiram M. Greene, to judge from the host of letters
I have received from readers who have not read the best magazines in
the past because, as many of them state, they feared that they were
too "high-brow," but who have been convinced, by the introduction to
the best contemporary fiction afforded them weekly in the supplement
to their Sunday newspaper, that such periodicals as _Harper's Magazine_
and _Scribner's Magazine_ have many qualities to commend them to the
untrained reader. All this serves to illustrate my point that the
commercial short story is not preferred by that imaginary norm of
editors known as "the reading public." If adequate means are employed
to allay the average man's suspicions of literature and to introduce
him painlessly to the best that our writers are creating, my experience
shows absolutely that he will respond heartily and make higher standards
possible by his support. 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.

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