TO

WILBUR DANIEL STEELE

BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT

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

To The Pictorial Review Company and Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock for permission to reprint "The Excursion," first published in The Pictorial Review; to The Century Company and Mr. Thomas Beer for permission to reprint "Onnie," first published in The Century Magazine; to Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Maxwell Struthers Burt for permission to reprint "A Cup of Tea," first published in Scribner's Magazine; to The Pictorial Review Company and Mr. Francis Buzzell for permission to reprint "Lonely Places," first published in The Pictorial Review; to The Curtis Publishing Company and Mr. Irvin S. Cobb for permission to reprint "Boys Will Be Boys," first published in The Saturday Evening Post; to Harper and Brothers and Mr. Charles Caldwell Dobie for permission to reprint "Laughter," first published in Harper's Magazine; to The Century Company and Mr. H. G. Dwight for permission to reprint "The Emperor of Elam," first published in The Century Magazine; to The Metropolitan Magazine Company and Miss Edna Ferber for permission to reprint "The Gay Old Dog," first published in The Metropolitan Magazine; to The Atlantic Monthly Company and Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould for permission to reprint "The Knight's Move," first published in The Atlantic Monthly; to The Crowell Publishing Company, the editor of Every Week, and Mrs. George Cram Cook for permission to reprint "A Jury of Her Peers," by Susan Glaspell, first published in Every Week and The Associated Sunday Magazines; to The Century Company and Captain Frederick Stuart Greene for permission to reprint "The Bunker Mouse," first published in The Century Magazine; to Mr. Paul R. Reynolds for confirmation of Captain Greene's permission; to The Pictorial Review Company and Mr. Richard Matthews Hallet for permission to reprint "Rainbow Pete," first published in The Pictorial Review; to The International Magazine Company, the editor of The Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Miss Fannie Hurst for permission to reprint "Get Ready the Wreaths," first published in The Cosmopolitan Magazine; to the editor of The Pagan and Mrs. Vincent Costello for permission to reprint "The Strange-Looking Man," by Fanny Kemble Johnson, first published in The Pagan; to The Stratford Journal, the editor of The Stratford Journal, and Mr. Burton Kline for permission to reprint "The Caller in the Night," first published in The Stratford Journal; to The Boston Transcript Company and Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan for permission to reprint "The Interval," first published in The Boston Evening Transcript; to Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Lawrence Perry for permission to reprint "'A Certain Rich Man—,'" first published in Scribner's Magazine; to The Curtis Publishing Company and Mrs. Mary Brecht Pulver for permission to reprint "The Path of Glory," first published in The Saturday Evening Post; to The Pictorial Review Company and Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele for permission to reprint "Ching, Ching, Chinaman," first published in The Pictorial Review; and to Harper and Brothers and Miss Mary Synon for permission to reprint "None So Blind," first published in Harper's Magazine.

Acknowledgments are specially due to The Boston Evening Transcript and The Bookman for permission to reprint the large body of material previously published in their pages.

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

Mrs. Padraic Colum, Mr. A. A. Boyden, Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, Mr. Henry A. Bellows, Mr. Herman E. Cassino, Mr. G. G. Wyant, Mr. Burton Kline, Mr. Douglas Z. Doty, Mr. Barry Benefield, Mr. T. R. Smith, Mr. Frederick Lewis Allen, Mr. Henry J. Forman, Miss Honoré Willsie, Mr. Harold Hersey, Mr. Bruce Barton, Miss Bernice Brown, Miss Mariel Brady, Mr. William Frederick Bigelow, Mr. John Chapman Hilder, Mr. Thomas B. Wells, Mr. Lee Foster Hartman, Mr. Sewell Haggard, Mr. Samuel W. Hippler, Mr. Joseph Bernard Rethy, Mr. Karl Edwin Harriman, Mr. Christopher Morley, Miss Margaret Anderson, Mrs. Hughes Cornell, Miss Myra G. Reed, Mr. Merrill Rogers, Mr. Charles Hanson Towne, Mr. Carl Hovey, Miss Sonya Levien, Mr. John T. Frederick, Mr. Ival McPeak, Mr. Robert H. Davis, Mrs. R. M. Hallowell, Mr. Harold T. Pulsifer, Mr. Wyndham Martyn, Mr. Frank Harris, Mr. Robert W. Sneddon, Miss Rose L. Ellerbe, Mr. Arthur T. Vance, Miss Jane Lee, Mr. Joseph Kling, Mr. William Marion Reedy, Mr. Leo Pasvolsky, Mr. Churchill Williams, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. Waldo Frank, Mr. H. E. Maule, Mr. Henry L. Mencken, Mr. Robert Thomas Hardy, Miss Anne Rankin, Mr. Henry T. Schnittkind, Dr. Isaac Goldberg, Mr. Charles K. Field, Mrs. Mary Fanton Roberts, Miss Sarah Field Splint, Miss Mabel Barker, Mr. Hayden Carruth, Mrs. Kathleen Norris, Mrs. Ethel Hoe, Miss Mildred Cram, Miss Dorothea Lawrance Mann, Miss Hilda Baker, Mr. William Stanley Braithwaite, Mr. Frank Owen, Mr. Alexander Harvey, Mr. Seumas O'Brien, Madame Gaston Lachaise, Mr. John J. Phillips, Mr. Sylvester Baxter, Miss Alice Brown, Mr. Francis Buzzell, Mr. Will Levington Comfort, Mr. Robert A. Parker, Mr. Randolph Edgar, Miss Augusta B. Fowler, Captain Frederick Stuart Greene, Mr. Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, Mr. Reginald Wright Kauffman, Mr. J. B. Kerfoot, Mrs. Elsie S. Lewars, Miss Jeannette Marks, Mr. W. M. Clayton, Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan, Mr. Henry Wallace Phillips, Mr. Melville Davisson Post, Mr. John D. Sabine, Mr. Richard Barker Shelton, Mrs. A. M. Scruggs, Miss May Selley, Mr. Daniel J. Shea, Mr. Vincent Starrett, Mr. M. M. Stearns, Mrs. Ann Watkins, Dr. Blanche Colton Williams, Mr. Edward P. Nagel, Mr. G. Humphrey, Rev. J.-F. Raiche, Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele, Miss Louise Rand Bascom, Mr. Octavus Roy Cohen, Mr. Robert Cumberland, Mr. Charles Divine, Mr. Frank C. Dodd, Mr. William R. Kane, Mr. David Gibson, Miss Ida Warren Gould, Miss Ella E. Hirsch, Miss Marie Louise Kinsella, Mr. Frank E. Lohn, Mrs. Margaret Medbury, Miss Anna Mitchell, Mr. Robert W. Neal, Mr. Edwin Carty Ranck, Miss Anne B. Schultze, Mrs. Celia Baldwin Whitehead, Mr. Horatio Winslow, Miss Kate Buss, Mrs. E. B. Dewing, Mr. A. E. Dingle, Mr. Edmund R. Brown, Mr. George Gilbert, Mr. Harry E. Jergens, Mr. Eric Levison, Mr. Robert McBlair, Mrs. Vivien C. Mackenzie, Mr. W. W. Norman, Rev. Wilbur Fletcher Steele, Mrs. Elizabeth C. A. Smith, Captain Achmed Abdullah, Mr. H. H. Howland, Mr. Howard W. Cook, Mr. Newton A. Fuessle, Mr. B. Guilbert Guerney, Mr. William H. Briggs, Mr. Francis Garrison, Mr. Albert J. Klinck, Mr. Alfred A. Knopf, Miss Mary Lerner, Mr. H. F. Jenkins, Mr. Guy Holt, Mr. H. S. Latham, Mr. H. L. Pangborn, Miss Maisie Prim, Mr. S. Edgar Briggs, Mr. William Morrow, Mr. Sherwood Anderson, Hon. W. Andrews, Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock, Mr. Thomas Beer, Mrs. Fleta Campbell Springer, Miss Sarah N. Cleghorn, Mr. Irvin S. Cobb, Miss Alice Cowdery, Miss Bertha Helen Crabbe, Mr. H. G. Dwight, Miss Edna Ferber, Mrs. Elizabeth Irons Folsom, Miss Ellen Glasgow, Mrs. George Cram Cook, Mr. Armistead C. Gordon, Miss Fannie Hurst, Mrs. Vincent Costello, Mrs. E. Clement Jones, Mrs. Gerald Stanley Lee, Mr. Addison Lewis, Mr. Edison Marshall, Mr. Edgar Lee Masters, Miss Gertrude Nafe, Mr. Meredith Nicholson, Mr. Harvey J. O'Higgins, Mr. Lawrence Perry, Mrs. Olive Higgins Prouty, Mrs. Mary Brecht Pulver, Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt, Mr. Herman Schneider, Professor Grant Showerman, Miss Mary Synon, Mrs. Mary Heaton O'Brien, Mr. George Weston, and especially to Mr. Francis J. Hannigan, to whom I owe invaluable cooperation in ways too numerous to mention.

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, editors, and publishers, of stories published during 1918 which have qualities of distinction, and yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice. It is also my intention during 1918 to review all volumes of short stories published during that year in the United States. All communications and volumes submitted for review in "The Best Short Stories of 1918" maybe addressed to me at South Yarmouth, Massachusetts. 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.

INTRODUCTION

A year ago, in the introduction to "The Best Short Stories of 1916," I pointed out that the American short story cannot be reduced to a literary formula, because the art in which it finds its concrete embodiment is a growing art. The critic, when he approaches American literature, cannot regard it as he can regard any foreign literature. Setting aside the question of whether our cosmopolitan population, with its widely different kinds of racial heritage, is at an advantage or a disadvantage because of its conflicting traditions, we must accept the variety in substance and attempt to find in it a new kind of national unity, hitherto unknown in the history of the world. The message voiced in President Wilson's words on several occasions during the past year is a true reflection of the message implicit in American literature. Various in substance, it finds its unity in the new freedom of democracy, and English and French, German and Slav, Italian and Scandinavian bring to the common melting-pot ideals which are fused in a national unity of democratic utterance.

It is inevitable, therefore, that in this stage of our national literary development, our newly conscious speech lacks the sophisticated technique of older literatures. But, perhaps because of this very limitation, it is much more alert to the variety and life of the human substance with which it deals. It does not take the whole of life for granted and it often reveals the fresh naïveté of childhood in its discovery of life. When its sophistication is complete, it is the sophistication of English rather than of American literature, and is derivative rather than original, for the most part, in its criticism of life. I would specifically except, however, from this criticism the work of three writers, at least, whose sophistication is the embodiment of a new American technique. Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Wilbur Daniel Steele, and H. G. Dwight have each attained a distinction in our contemporary literature which places them at the head of their craft.

During the past year there has been much pessimistic criticism of the American short story, some of it by Americans, and some by Europeans who are now residing in our midst. To the European mind, trained in a tradition where technique in story-writing is paramount, it is natural that the American short story should seem to reveal grave deficiencies. I am by no means disposed to minimize the weakness of American craftsmanship, but I feel that at the present stage of our literary development, discouragement will prove a very easy and fatal thing. The typical point of view of the European critic, when justified, is adequately reflected in an article by Mary M. Colum, which was published in the Dial last spring: "Those of us who take an interest in literary history will remember how particular literary forms at times seize hold of a country: in Elizabethan England, it was the verse drama; in the eighteenth century, it was the essay; in Scandinavia of a generation ago, it was the drama again. At present America is in the grip of the short story—so thoroughly in its grip indeed that, in addition to all the important writers, nearly all the literate population who are not writing movie scenarios are writing or are about to write short stories. One reason for this is the general belief that this highly sophisticated and subtle art is a means for making money in spare time, and so one finds everybody, from the man who solicits insurance to the barber who sells hair-tonics, engaged in writing, or in taking courses in the writing, of short stories. Judging from what appears in the magazines, one imagines that they get their efforts accepted. There is no doubt that the butcher, the baker, and the candle-stick maker are easily capable of producing the current short stories with the aids now afforded."

Now this is the heart of the matter with which criticism has to deal. It is regrettable that the American magazine editor is not more mindful of his high calling, but the tremendous advertising development of the American magazine has bound American literature in the chains of commercialism, and before a permanent literary criticism of the American short story can be established, we must fight to break these bonds. I conceive it to be my essential function to begin at the bottom and record the first signs of grace, rather than to limit myself to the top and write critically about work which will endure with or without criticism. If American critics would devote their attention for ten years to this spade work, they might not win so much honor, but we should find the atmosphere clearer at the end of that period for the true exercise of literary criticism.