The Best Short Stories of 1917 Part 98

41. THE CALLER IN THE NIGHT by _Burton Kline_ (The Stratford Journal). I believe that Mr. Kline has completely realized in this story a fine imaginative situation and has presented a folk story with a significant legendary quality. It is in the tradition of Hawthorne, but the substance with which Mr. Kline deals is the substance of his own people, and consequently that in which his creative impulse has found the freest scope. It may be compared to its own advantage with "The Lost Phoebe" by Theodore Dreiser, which was equally memorable among the folk-stories of 1916, and the comparison suggests that in both cases the author's training as a novelist has not been to his disadvantage as a short-story teller.

42. WHEN DID YOU WRITE YOUR MOTHER LAST? by _Addison Lewis_ (Reedy's Mirror). This is the only story I have read in three years in which it seemed to me that I found the authentic voice of "O. Henry" speaking.

Mr. Lewis has been publis.h.i.+ng a series of these "Tales While You Wait"

in Reedy's Mirror during the past few months, and I should much prefer them to those of Jack Lait for the complete success with which he has achieved his aims. Imitation of "O. Henry" has been the curse of American story-telling for the past ten years, because "O. Henry" is practically inimitable. Mr. Lewis is not an imitator, but he may well prove before very long to be "O. Henry's" successor. In the words of Padna Dan and Micus Pat, "Here's the chance for some one to make a discovery."

43. WIDOW LA RUE by _Edgar Lee Masters_ (Reedy's Mirror). This is the best short story in verse that the year has produced, and as literature it realizes in my belief even greater imaginative fulfilment than "Spoon River Anthology." I should have most certainly wished to include it in "The Best Short Stories of 1917" had it been in prose, and it adds one more unforgettable legend to our folk imagination.

44. THE UNDERSTUDY by _Johnson Morton_ (Harper's Magazine) is an ironic character study developed with much finesse in the tradition of Henry James. Its defect is a certain conventional atmosphere which demands an artificial att.i.tude on the part of the reader. Its admirable distinction is its faithful rendering of a personality not unlike the "Tante" of Anne Douglas Sedgwick, if a novel portrait and a short story portrait may fittingly be compared. If the portraiture is unpleasant, it is at any rate rendered with incisive kindliness.

45. THE HEART OF LIFE by _Meredith Nicholson_ (Scribner's Magazine). Mr.

Nicholson has treated an old theme freshly in "The Heart of Life" and discovered in it new values of contrasting character. Among his short stories it stands out as notably as "A Hoosier Chronicle" among his novels. It is in such work as this that Mr. Nicholson justifies his calling, and it is by them that he has most hope of remembrance in American literature.

46. MURDER? by _Seumas...o...b..ien_ (The Ill.u.s.trated Sunday Magazine). With something of Hardy's stark rendering of atmosphere, Mr. O'Brien has portrayed a grim situation unforgettably. Woven out of the simplest elements, and with an entire lack of literary sophistication, his story is fairly comparable to the work of Daniel Corkery, whose volume, "A Munster Twilight," has interested me more than any other volume of short stories published in America this year. The story is of particular interest because Mr. O'Brien's reputation as an artist has been based solely upon his work as a satirist and Irish fabulist.

47. THE INTERVAL by _Vincent O'Sullivan_ (Boston Evening Transcript). It is odd to reflect that a literary artist of Mr. O'Sullivan's distinction is not represented in American magazines during 1917 at all, and that it has been left to a daily newspaper to publish his work. In "The Interval," Mr. O'Sullivan has sought to suggest the spiritual effect of the war upon a certain type of mind. He has rendered with faithful subtleness the newly aroused longing for religious belief or some form of concrete spiritual expression that bereavement brings. This state has a pathos of its own that the author adequately realizes in his story, and his irony in portraying it is Gallic in its quality.

48. BIXBY'S BRIDGE by _Georgia Wood Pangborn_ (Harper's Magazine). Mrs.

Pangborn is well known for her artistic stories of the supernatural, and this will rank among the very best of them. She shares with Algernon Blackwood that gift for making spiritual illusion real which is so rare in contemporary work. What is specially distinctive is her gift of selection, by which she brings out the most illusive psychological contrasts.

49. "A CERTAIN RICH MAN--," by _Lawrence Perry_ (Scribner's Magazine). I find in this story an emotional quality keyed up as tightly, but as surely, as in the best short stories by Mary Synon. Remote as its substance may seem, superficially, it touches the very heart of the experience that the war has brought to us all, and reveals the naked stuff out of which our war psychology has emerged.

50. THE PORTRAIT by _Emery Pottle_ (The Touchstone). This study in Italian backgrounds is by another disciple of Henry James, who portrays with deft sure touches the nostalgia of an American girl unhappily married to an Italian n.o.bleman. It just fails of complete persuasiveness because it is a trifle overstrung, but nevertheless it is memorable for its artistic sincerity.

51. THE PATH OF GLORY by _Mary Brecht Pulver_ (Sat.u.r.day Evening Post).

This story of how distinction came to a poor family in the mountains through the death of their son in the French army is simply told with a quiet, una.s.suming earnestness that makes it very real. It marks a new phase of Mrs. Pulver's talent, and one which promises her a richer fulfilment in the future than her other stories have suggested. Time and time again I have been impressed this year by the folk quality that is manifest in our younger writers, and what is most encouraging is that, when they write of the poor and the lowly, there is less of that condescension toward their subject than has been characteristic of American folk-writing in the past.

52. MISS FOTHERGILL by _Norval Richardson_ (Scribner's Magazine). The tradition in English fiction, which is most signally marked by "Pride and Prejudice," "Cranford," and "Barchester Towers," and which was so pleasantly continued by the late Dr. S. Weir Mitch.e.l.l and by Margaret Deland, is admirably embodied in the work of this writer, whose work should be better known. The quiet blending of humor and pathos in "Miss Fothergill" is unusual.

53. THE SCAR THAT TRIPLED by _William Gunn Shepherd_ (Metropolitan Magazine) is none the less truly a remarkable short story because it happens to be based on fact. "The Deserter" was the last fine short story written by the late Richard Harding Davis, and "The Scar That Tripled" is the engrossing narrative of the adventure which suggested that story. Personally, I regard it as superior to "The Deserter."

54. A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS by _Grant Showerman_ (Century Magazine).

Professor Showerman's country chronicles are now well known to American readers, and this is quite the best of them. These sketches rank with those of Hamlin Garland as a permanent and delightful record of a pioneer life that has pa.s.sed away for ever. Their deliberate homeliness and consistent reflection of a small boy's att.i.tude toward life have no equal to my knowledge.

55. THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL (The Pictorial Review), and 56. THE FLAG OF ELIPHALET (Boston Evening Transcript) by _Elsie Singmaster_ add two more portraits to the pleasant gallery of Elsie Singmaster's vivid creations.

Although her vein is a narrow one, no one is more competent than she in its expression, and few surpa.s.s her in the faithful rendering of homely but none the less real spiritual circ.u.mstance.

57. THE END OF THE ROAD by _Gordon Arthur Smith_ (Scribner's Magazine) is a sequel to "Feet of Gold" and chronicles the further love adventures of Ferdinand Taillandy, and their tragic conclusion. In these two stories Mr. Smith has proven his literary kins.h.i.+p with Leonard Merrick, and these stories surely rank with the chronicles of Tricotrin and Pitou.

58. CHING, CHING, CHINAMAN (Pictorial Review), 59. KED'S HAND (Harper's Magazine), 60. WHITE HANDS (Pictorial Review), and 61. THE WOMAN AT SEVEN BROTHERS (Harper's Magazine) by _Wilbur Daniel Steele_. With these four stories, together with "A Devil of a Fellow," "Free," and "A Point of Honor," Mr. Steele a.s.sumes his rightful place with Katharine Fullerton Gerould and H. G. Dwight as a leader in American fiction.

"Ching, Ching, Chinaman," "White Hands," and "The Woman at Seven Brothers" are, in my belief, the three best short stories that were published in 1917, by an American author, and I may safely predict their literary permanence. Mr. Steele's extraordinary gift for presenting action and spiritual conflict pictorially is unrivalled, and his sense of human mystery has a rich tragic humor akin to that of Thomas Hardy, though his philosophy of life is infinitely more hopeful.

62. NONE SO BLIND by _Mary Synon_ (Harper's Magazine) is a study in tragic circ.u.mstance, the more powerful because it is so reticently handled. It is Miss Synon's first profound study in feminine psychology, and reveals an unusual sense of emotional values. Few backgrounds have been more subtly rendered in their influence upon character, and the action of the story is inevitable despite its character of surprise.

63. THE SCAR by _Elisabeth Stead Taber_ (The Seven Arts). The brutal realism of this story may repel the reader, but its power and convincing quality cannot be gainsaid. So many writers have followed John Fox's example in writing about the mountaineers of the Alleghanies, that it is gratifying to chronicle so exceptional a story as this. It is as inevitable in its ugliness as "The Cat of the Cane-Brake" by Frederick Stuart Greene, and psychologically it is far more convincing.