Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
REQUIREMENTS OF THE SHORT STORY
HOW THIS BOOK MAY BE USED
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS-TREE Henry van Dyke
A FRENCH TAR-BABY Joel Chandler Harris
SONNY'S CHRISTENIN' Ruth McEnery Stuart
CHRISTMAS NIGHT WITH SATAN John Fox, Jr.
A NEST-EGG James Whitcomb Riley
WEE WILLIE WINKIE Rudyard Kipling
THE GOLD BUG Edgar Allan Poe
THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF O. Henry
THE FRESHMAN FULL-BACK Ralph D. Paine
GALLEGHER Richard Harding Davis
THE JUMPING FROG Mark Twain
THE LADY OR THE TIGER? Frank R. Stockton
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT Francis Bret Harte
THE REVOLT OF MOTHER Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
MARSE CHAN Thomas Nelson Page
"POSSON JONE'" George W. Cable
OUR AROMATIC UNCLE Henry Cuyler Bunner
QUALITY John Galsworthy
THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT Edith Wharton
A MESSENGER Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
MARKHEIM Robert Louis Stevenson.
Why must we confine the reading of our children to the olderliterary classics? This is the question asked by an ever-increasing number of thoughtful teachers. They have no wish todisplace or to discredit the classics. On the contrary, they loveand revere them. But they do wish to give their pupils somethingadditional, something that pulses with present life, that ischaracteristic of to-day. The children, too, wonder that, with thegreat literary outpouring going on about them, they must alwaysfill their cups from the cisterns of the past.
The short story is especially adapted to supplement our high-school reading. It is of a piece with our varied, hurried,efficient American life, wherein figure the business man's lunch,the dictagraph, the telegraph, the telephone, the automobile, andthe railway "limited." It has achieved high art, yet conforms tothe modern demand that our literature—since it must be read withdespatch, if read at all—be compact and compelling. Moreover, theshort story is with us in almost overwhelming numbers, and isprobably here to stay. Indeed, our boys and girls are somewhatappalled at the quantity of material from which they must selecttheir reading, and welcome any instruction that enables them toknow the good from the bad. It is certain, therefore, that,whatever else they may throw into the educational discard whenthey leave the high school, they will keep and use anything theymay have learned about this form of literature which has become sopowerful a factor in our daily life.
This book does not attempt to select the greatest stories of thetime. What tribunal would dare make such a choice? Nor does itattempt to trace the evolution of the short story or to point outnatural types and differences. These topics are better suited tocollege classes. Its object is threefold: to supply interestingreading belonging to the student's own time, to help him to seethat there is no divorce between classic and modern literature,and, by offering him material structurally good and typical of thequalities represented, to assist him in discriminating between theartistic and the inartistic. The stories have been carefullyselected, because in the period of adolescence "nothing read failsto leave its mark"; [Footnote: G Stanl