The Best Short Stories of 1915

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"Good," cried the captain. "Why should a man with muscles like yours
have his face ground into the dust?"

The soul of Big Ivan grew during those days. He felt himself a man, a
man who was born upright to speak his thoughts without fear.

The ship rolled into Queenstown one bright morning, and Ivan and his
nine hundred steerage companions crowded the for'ard deck. A boy in
a rowboat threw a line to the deck, and after it had been fastened
to a stanchion he came up hand over hand. The emigrants watched him
curiously. An old woman sitting in the boat pulled off her shoes, sat
in a loop of the rope, and lifted her hand as a signal to her son on
deck.

"Hey, fellers," said the boy, "help me pull me muvver up. She wants to
sell a few dozen apples, an' they won't let her up the gangway!"

Big Ivan didn't understand the words, but he guessed what the boy
wanted. He made one of a half dozen who gripped the rope and started
to pull the ancient apple woman to the deck.

They had her halfway up the side when an undersized third officer
discovered what they were doing. He called to a steward, and the steward
sprang to obey.

"Turn a hose on her!" cried the officer. "Turn a hose on the old woman!"

The steward rushed for the hose. He ran with it to the side of the
ship with the intention of squirting the old woman, who was swinging
in midair and exhorting the six men who were dragging her to the deck.

"Pull!" she cried. "Sure, I'll give every one of ye a rosy red apple an'
me blessing with it."

The steward aimed the muzzle of the hose, and Big Ivan of the Bridge let
go of the rope and sprang at him. The fist of the great Russian went out
like a battering ram; it struck the steward between the eyes, and he
dropped upon the deck. He lay like one dead, the muzzle of the hose
wriggling from his limp hands.

The third officer and the interpreter rushed at Big Ivan, who stood
erect, his hands clenched.

"Ask the big swine why he did it?" roared the officer.

"Because he is a coward!" cried Ivan. "They wouldn't do that in
America!"

"What does the big brute know about America?" cried the officer.

"Tell him I have dreamed of it," shouted Ivan. "Tell him it is in my
Dream. Tell him I will kill him if he turns the water upon this old
woman."

The apple seller was on deck then, and with the wisdom of the Celt she
understood. She put her lean hand upon the great head of the Russian and
blessed him in Gaelic. Ivan bowed before her, then as she offered him a
rosy apple he led her toward Anna, a great Viking leading a withered old
woman who walked with the grace of a duchess.

"Please don't touch him," she cried, turning to the officer. "We have
been waiting for your ship for six hours, and we have only five dozen
apples to sell. It's a great man he is. Sure he's as big as Finn
MacCool."

Some one pulled the steward behind a ventilator and revived him by
squirting him with water from the hose which he had tried to turn upon
the old woman. The third officer slipped quietly away.

The Atlantic was kind to the ship that carried Ivan and Anna. Through
sunny days they sat up on deck and watched the horizon. They wanted to
be among those who would get the first glimpse of the wonderland.

They saw it on a morning with sunshine and soft winds. Standing
together in the bow, they looked at the smear upon the horizon, and
their eyes filled with tears. They forgot the long road to Bobruisk,
the rocking journey to Libau, the mad buckjumping boat in whose timbers
the sea devils of the Baltic had bored holes. Everything unpleasant was
forgotten, because the Dream filled them with a great happiness.

The inspectors at Ellis Island were interested in Ivan. They walked
around him and prodded his muscles, and he smiled down upon them
good-naturedly.

"A fine animal," said one. "Gee, he's a new white hope! Ask him can he
fight?"

An interpreter put the question, and Ivan nodded. "I have fought," he
said.

"Gee!" cried the inspector. "Ask him was it for purses or what?"

"For freedom," answered Ivan. "For freedom to stretch my legs and
straighten my neck!"

Ivan and Anna left the Government ferryboat at the Battery. They started
to walk uptown, making for the East Side, Ivan carrying the big trunk
that no other man could lift.

It was a wonderful morning. The city was bathed in warm sunshine, and
the well-dressed men and women who crowded the sidewalks made the two
immigrants think that it was a festival day. Ivan and Anna stared at
each other in amazement. They had never seen such dresses as those worn
by the smiling women who passed them by; they had never seen such
well-groomed men.

"It is a feast day for certain," said Anna.

"They are dressed like princes and princesses," murmured Ivan. "There
are no poor here, Anna. None."

Like two simple children, they walked along the streets of the City of
Wonder. What a contrast it was to the gray, stupid towns where the
Terror waited to spring upon the cowed people. In Bobruisk, Minsk,
Vilna, and Libau the people were sullen and afraid. They walked in
dread, but in the City of Wonder beside the glorious Hudson every person
seemed happy and contented.

They lost their way, but they walked on, looking at the wonderful shop
windows, the roaring elevated trains, and the huge skyscrapers. Hours
afterward they found themselves in Fifth Avenue near Thirty-third
Street, and there the miracle happened to the two Russian immigrants.
It was a big miracle inasmuch as it proved the Dream a truth, a great
truth.

Ivan and Anna attempted to cross the avenue, but they became confused
in the snarl of traffic. They dodged backward and forward as the stream
of automobiles swept by them. Anna screamed, and, in response to her
scream, a traffic policeman, resplendent in a new uniform, rushed to
her side. He took the arm of Anna and flung up a commanding hand. The
charging autos halted. For five blocks north and south they jammed on
the brakes when the unexpected interruption occurred, and Big Ivan
gasped.

"Don't be flurried, little woman," said the cop. "Sure I can tame 'em by
liftin' me hand."

Anna didn't understand what he said, but she knew it was something nice
by the manner in which his Irish eyes smiled down upon her. And in front
of the waiting automobiles he led her with the same care that he would
give to a duchess, while Ivan, carrying the big trunk, followed them,
wondering much. Ivan's mind went back to Bobruisk on the night the
Terror was abroad.

The policeman led Anna to the sidewalk, patted Ivan good-naturedly upon
the shoulder, and then with a sharp whistle unloosed the waiting stream
of cars that had been held up so that two Russian immigrants could cross
the avenue.

Big Ivan of the Bridge took the trunk from his head and put it on the
ground. He reached out his arms and folded Anna in a great embrace. His
eyes were wet.

"The Dream is true!" he cried. "Did you see, Anna? We are as good as
they! This is the land where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the
blood!"

* * * * *

The President was nearing the close of his address. Anna shook Ivan, and
Ivan came out of the trance which the President's words had brought upon
him. He sat up and listened intently:

_We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things
in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's
evening. Some of us let those great dreams die, but others nourish and
protect them, nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the
sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that
their dreams will come true._

The President finished. For a moment he stood looking down at the faces
turned up to him, and Big Ivan of the Bridge thought that the President
smiled at him. Ivan seized Anna's hand and held it tight.

"He knew of my Dream!" he cried. "He knew of it. Did you hear what he
said about the dreams of a spring day?"

"Of course he knew," said Anna. "He is the wisest in America, where
there are many wise men. Ivan, you are a citizen now."

"And you are a citizen, Anna."

The band started to play "My Country, 'tis of Thee," and Ivan and Anna
got to their feet. Standing side by side, holding hands, they joined in
with the others who had found after long days of journeying the blessed
land where dreams come true.

WHOSE DOG--?[6]

BY FRANCES GREGG

From _The Forum_

[6] Copyright, 1915, by Mitchell Kennerley.

"Hey--there's ladies here, move on--you!" The tone was authoritative and
old John, the village drunkard, crouched away.

"I warn't doin' nothin'," he clutched feebly at the loose hanging rags
that clothed him, "only wanted to see same's them. Guess this pier's big
enough to hold us all."

"Halloo, John, have a drink?" A grinning boy held a can of salt water
toward him.

The quick maudlin tears sprang to the old man's eyes. "Little fellers,"
he muttered, "little fellers, they oughtn't ter act that way."

"Give him a new necktie, he's gotta go to dinner with the Lodge." A
handful of dank sea-weed writhed around the old man's neck. "That's a
turtle, that is," the boy went on, the need for imparting information
justifying his lapse from ragging the drunkard. "There--swimming
round--it's tied to that stake. You orter've seen it at low tide when
it was on the beach. It weighs ninety pounds."

"I seen a turtle onct," the drunkard quavered. "It was bigger'n that.
En they tied it to a stake--en it swam round--en it swam round--." His
sodden brain clutched for something more to say, some marvel with which
to hold the interest of the gathered boys. It was good to talk. If only
they would let him talk to them. If only they would let him sit on the
store porch and smoke and gossip. He wouldn't be the town disgrace--

"Well--go on--what'd't do?"

"Hey you!"--the boys were interrupted by the authoritative voice--"I
told you to move on, didn't I--now if I tell you again I'll run you in.
D'yer hear? What you boys let that old bum hang around you for anyway.
What's he doin' here?"

"Aw, he's fun. He warn't doin' nothin'. He was just awatchin' it swim.
It's tied to that post. It don't come up no more."

"Watchin' it swim, eh, was he? A'right. Whose dog is it?" The officer
turned and sauntered away.

Sudden horror seized the old man. The liquor seemed drained out of his
veins: his brain worked almost quickly. "Whose dog--whose dog? Say!" he
darted after the retreating boys. "Say--that ain't no dog--is it--no
_dog_? Tied up like that to drown--say--"

"Aw--keep off--I told you onct--it's a turtle for the Lodge dinner." The
boy shook himself free.

The old man stood a moment, shaken. His pulpy brain worked dimly toward
the conception of the pain that was consuming him. "Whose dog--" that
man had asked--and he hadn't meant to help it--"whose dog!" They could
do it--tie up a dog to drown in sight of people--like that--cruel. He
saw the policeman coming toward him again. In a sudden frenzy he
clutched his tattered garments about him and began to run, to run toward
the end of the pier.

The boys raced after him. "What yer gonter do?" they shouted. "What yer
gonter do?"

The old man turned and looked at them a moment with twitching features.
"I'm gonter die," he said.

"Come on, you fellers--come on--the drunk's gonter dive--come on--he's
cryin'!"

There was a splash. A surge of green filth and mud spread and dyed the
water. A row of expectant heads leaned over the rail. "Say--he ain't
come up." They waited.

The policeman strolled leisurely down in response to their repeated
cries. "_Who_ ain't come up? What, him--the drunk?" The officer leaned
lethargically over the rail. "What'm I gonter do? Why, leave 'm. He
ain't got no folks gonter sit up nights waitin' fer 'm. Now you young
ones go along home to your suppers," he indulgently commanded, "and you
little fellers, if you want crabs, be 'round here early. By to-morrow
this place will be fairly swarmin' with them."

LIFE[7]

BY BEN HECHT

From _The Little Review_

[7] Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson. Copyright, 1916, by Ben
Hecht.

The sun was shining in the dirty street.

Old women with shapeless bodies waddled along on their way to market.

Bearded old men who looked like the fathers of Jerusalem walked
flatfooted, nodding back and forth.

"The tread of the processional surviving in Halsted Street," thought
Moisse, the young dramatist who was moving with the crowd.

Children sprawled in the refuse-laden alleys. One of them ragged and
clotted with dirt stood half-dressed on the curbing and urinated into
the street.

Wagons rumbled, filled with fruits and iron and rags and vegetables.

Human voices babbled above the noises of the traffic. Moisse watched the
lively scene.

"Every day it's the same," he thought; "the same smells, the same noise
and people swarming over the pavements. I am the only one in the street
whose soul is awake. There's a pretty girl looking at me. She suspects
the condition of my soul. Her fingers are dirty. Why doesn't she buy
different shoes? She thinks I am lost. In five years she will be fat.
In ten years she will waddle with a shawl over her head."

The young dramatist smiled.

"Good God," he thought, "where do they come from? Where are they going?
No place to no place. But always moving, shuffling, waddling, crying
out. The sun shines on them. The rain pours on them. It burns. It
freezes. To-day they are bright with color. To-morrow they are gray with
gloom. But they are always the same, always in motion."

The young dramatist stopped on the corner and looking around him spied a
figure sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the wall of a building.

The figure was an old man.

He had a long white beard.

He had his legs tucked under him and an upturned tattered hat rested in
his lap.

His thin face was raised and the sun beat down on it, but his eyes were
closed.

"Asleep," mused Moisse.

He moved closer to him.

The man's head was covered with long silky white hair that hung down to
his neck and hid his ears. It was uncombed. His face in the sun looked
like the face of an ascetic, thin, finely veined.

He had a long nose and almost colorless lips and the skin on his cheeks
was white. It was drawn tight over his bones, leaving few wrinkles.

An expression of peace rested over him--peace and detachment. Of the
noise and babble he heard nothing. His eyes were closed to the crowded
frantic street.

He sat, his head back, his face bathed in the sun, smileless and
dreaming.

"A beggar," thought Moisse, "asleep, oblivious. Dead. All day he sits
in the sun like a saint, immobile. Like one of the old Alexandrian
ascetics, like a delicately carved image. He is awake in himself but
dead to others. The waves cannot touch him. His thoughts, oh to know
his thoughts and his dreams?"

Suddenly the eyes of the young dramatist widened. He was looking at the
beggar's long hair that hung to his neck.

"It's moving," he whispered half aloud. He came closer and stood over
the old man and gazed intently at the top of his head.

The hair was swaying faintly, each separate fiber moving alone....

It shifted, rose imperceptibly and fell. It quivered and glided....

"Lice," murmured Moisse.

He watched.

Silent and asleep the old man sat with his thin face to the sun and his
hair moved.

Vermin swarmed through it, creeping, crawling, tiny and infinitesimal.

Every strand was palpitating, shuddering under their mysterious energy.

At first Moisse could hardly make them out, but his eyes gradually grew
accustomed to the sight. And as he watched he saw the hair swell like
waves riding over the water, saw it drop and flutter, coil and uncoil of
its own accord.

Vermin raised it up, pulled it out, streaming up and down tirelessly in
vast armies.

They crawled furiously like dust specks blown thick through the white
beard.

They streamed and shifted and were never still.

They moved in and out, from no place to no place, but always moving,
frantic and frenzied.

An old woman passed and with a shake of her head dropped two pennies
into the upturned hat. Moisse hardly saw her. He saw only the
palpitating swarms that were now facing, easily visible, through the
gray white hair.

Some ventured down over the white ascetic face, crawling in every
direction, traveling around the lips and over the closed eyes, emerging
suddenly in thick streams from behind the covered ears and losing
themselves under the ever moving beard.

And Moisse, his senses strained, thought he heard a noise--a faint
crunching noise.

He listened.

The noise seemed to grow louder. He began to itch but he remained
bending over the head. He could hear them, like a faraway murmur, a
purring, uncertain sound.

"They're shouting and groaning, crying out, weeping and laughing," he
mused. "It is life ... life...."

He looked up and down the crowded burning street with its frantic crowd,
and smiled.

"Life," he repeated....

He walked away. Before him floated the hair of the beggar moving as if
stirred by a slow wind, and he itched.

"But who was the old man?" he thought.

A young woman, plump and smiling, jostled him. He felt her soft hip
pressing against him for a moment.

A child running barefoot through the street brushed against his legs. He
felt its sticky fingers seize him for an instant and then the child was
gone. On he walked.

Three young men confronted him for a second time. He passed between two
of them, squeezed by their shoulders.

A shapeless old woman bumped him with her back as she shuffled past.

Two children dodged in and out screaming and seized his arm to turn on.

The young dramatist stopped and remained standing still, looking about
him.

Then he laughed.

"Life," he murmured again; and

"I am the old man," he added, "I ... I...."

T.B.[8]

BY FANNIE HURST

From _The Saturday Evening Post_

[8] Copyright, 1915, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1916,
by Fannie Hurst.

The figurative underworld of a great city has no ventilation, housing
or lighting problems. Rooks and crooks who live in the putrid air of
crime are not denied the light of day, even though they loathe it.
Cadets, social skunks, whose carnivorous eyes love darkness, walk in
God's sunshine and breathe God's air. Scarlet women turn over in wide
beds and draw closer velvet curtains to shut out the morning. Gamblers
curse the dawn.

But what of the literal underworld of the great city? What of the
babes who cry in fetid cellars for the light and are denied it? What
of the Subway trackwalker, purblind from gloom; the coalstoker, whose
fiery tomb is the boiler room of a skyscraper; sweatshop workers, a
flight below the sidewalk level, whose faces are the color of dead
Chinese; six-dollar-a-week salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars
of six-million-dollar corporations?

This is the literal underworld of the great city, and its sunless
streets run literal blood--the blood of the babes who cried in vain; the
blood from the lungs of the sweatshop workers whose faces are the color
of dead Chinese; the blood from the cheeks of the six-dollar-a-week
salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars. But these are your problems
and my problems and the problems of the men who have found the strength
or the fear not to die rich. The babe's mother, who had never known
else, could not know that her cellar was fetid; she only cried out in
her anguish and hated vaguely in her heart.

Sara Juke, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Department Store,
did not know that lint from white goods clogs the lungs, and that the
air she breathed was putrefied as from a noxious swamp. Sometimes a
pain, sharp as a hatpin, entered between her shoulder blades. But what
of that? When the heart is young the heart is bold, and Sara could laugh
upward with the musical glee of a bird.

There were no seasons, except the spring and fall openings and
semi-annual clearing sales, in the bargain basement of the Titanic
store. On a morning when the white-goods counter was placing
long-sleeve, high-neck nightgowns in its bargain bins, and knit
underwear was supplanting the reduced muslins, Sara Juke drew her
little pink knitted jacket closer about her narrow shoulders and
shivered--shivered, but smiled. "Br-r-r! October never used to get under
my skin like this."

Hattie Krakow, roommate and co-worker, shrugged her bony shoulders and
laughed; but not with the upward glee of a bird--downward rather, until
it died in a croak in her throat. But then Hattie Krakow was ten years
older than Sara Juke; and ten years in the arc-lighted subcellar of the
Titanic Department Store can do much to muffle the ring in a laugh.

"Gee, you're as funny as your own funeral--you are! You keep up the
express pace you're going and there won't be another October left on
your calendar."

"That's right; cheer me up a bit, dearie. What's the latest style in
undertaking?"

"You'll know sooner 'n me if--"

"Aw, Hat, cut it! Wasn't I home in bed last night by eleven?"

"I ain't much on higher mathematics."

"Sure I was. I had to shove you over on your side of the bed; that's how
hard you was sleeping."

"A girl can't gad round dancing and rough-housing every night and work
eight hours on her feet, and put her lunch money on her back, and not
pay up for it. I've seen too many blue-eyed dolls like you get broken.
I--"

"Amen!"

Sara Juke rolled her blue eyes upward, and they were full of points of
light, as though stars were shining in them; and always her lips
trembled to laugh.

"There ain't nothing funny, Sara."

"Oh, Hat, with you like a owl!"

"If I was a girl and had a cough like I've seen enough in this basement
get; if I was a girl and my skirtband was getting two inches too big,
and I had to lie on my left side to breathe right, and my nightie was
all soaked round the neck when I got up in the morning--I wouldn't just
laugh and laugh. I'd cry a little--I would."

"That's right, Hat; step on the joy bug like it was a spider. Squash
it!"

"I wouldn't just laugh and laugh, and put my lunch money on my back
instead of eggs and milk inside of me, and run round all hours to dance
halls with every sporty Charley-boy that comes along."

"You leave him alone! You just cut that! Don't you begin on him!"

"I wouldn't get overheated, and not sleep enough; and--"

"For Pete's sake, Hat! Hire a hall!"

"I should worry! It ain't my grave you're digging."

"Aw, Hat."

"I ain't got your dolly face and your dolly ways with the boys; but I
got enough sense to live along decent."

"You're right pretty, I think, Hat."

"Oh, I could daub up, too, and gad with some of that fast gang if I
didn't know it don't lead nowheres. It ain't no cinch for a girl to
keep her health down here, even when she does live along decent like
me, eating regular and sleeping regular, and spending quiet evenings
in the room, washing-out and mending and pressing and all. It ain't
no cinch even then, lemme tell you. Do you think I'd have ever asked
a gay bird like you to come over and room with me if I hadn't seen
you begin to fade like a piece of calico, just like my sister Lizzie
did?"

"I'm taking that iron-tonic stuff like you want and spoiling my
teeth--ain't I, Hat? I know you been swell to me and all."

"You ain't going to let up until somebody whispers T.B. in your
shell-pink ear; and maybe them two letters will bring you to your
senses."

"T.B.?"

"Yes--T.B."

"Who's he?"

"Gee, you're as smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet
dunce cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke bonnet. T.B.
was what I said--T.B."

"Honest, Hat, I dunno--"

"For heaven's sake! _Too Berculosis_ is the way the exhibits and the
newspapers say it. L-u-n-g-s is another way to spell it. T.B."

"Too Berculosis!" Sara Juke's hand flew to her little breast. "Too
Berculosis! Hat, you--you don't--"

"Sure I don't. I ain't saying it's that--only I wanna scare you up a
little. I ain't saying it's that; but a girl that lets a cold hang on
like you do and runs round half the night, and don't eat right, can
make friends with almost anything, from measles to T.B."

Stars came out once more in Sara Juke's eyes, and her lips warmed and
curved to their smile. She moistened with her forefinger a yellow spit
curl that lay like a caress on her cheek. "Gee, you oughtta be writing
scare heads for the _Evening Gazette_!"

Hattie Krakow ran her hand over her smooth salt-and-pepper hair and sold
a marked-down flannellette petticoat.

"I can't throw no scare into you so long as you got him on your mind.
Oh, lud! There he starts now--that quickstep dance again!"

A quick red ran up into Miss Juke's hair and she inclined forward in the
attitude of listening as the lively air continued.

"The silly! Honest, ain't he the silly? He said he was going to play
that for me the first thing this morning. We dance it so swell together
and all. Aw, I thought he'd forget. Ain't he the silly--remembering me?"

The red flowed persistently higher.

"Silly ain't no name for him, with his square, Charley-boy face and
polished hair; and--"

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