Chapter XIV: Part II: The Period of the New Form (7)

The boys outside were not so excited over the tidings of my unlooked-for victory as I had expected them to be. They received the news, in fact, with a rather mortifying stoicism. Tom Hemingway, however, took enough interest in the affair to suggest that, instead of spending my twenty cents in paltry fire-crackers, I might go down town and buy another can of powder for his cannon. By doing so, he pointed out, I would be a part-proprietor, as it were, of the night’s performance, and would be entitled to occasionally touch the cannon off. This generosity affected me, and I hastened down the long hill-street to show myself worthy of it, repeating the instruction of “Kentucky Bear-Hunter-coarse-grain” over and over again to myself as I went.

Half-way on my journey I overtook a person whom, even in the gathering twilight, I recognized as Miss Stratford, the school-teacher. She also was walking down the hill and rapidly. It did not need the sight of a letter in her hand to tell me that she was going to the post-office. In those cruel war-days everybody went to the post-office. I myself went regularly to get our mail, and to exchange shin-plasters for one-cent stamps with which to buy yeast and other commodities that called for minute fractional currency.

Although I was very fond of Miss Stratford--I still recall her gentle eyes, and pretty, rounded, dark face, in its frame of long, black curls, with tender liking--I now coldly resolved to hurry past, pretending not to know her. It was a mean thing to do; Miss Stratford had always been good to me, shining in that respect in brilliant contrast to my other teachers, whom I hated bitterly. Still, the “Kentucky Bear-Hunter-coarse-grain” was too important a matter to wait upon any mere female friendships, and I quickened my pace into a trot, hoping to scurry by unrecognized.

“Oh, Andrew! is that you?” I heard her call out as I ran past. For the instant I thought of rushing on, quite as if I had not heard. Then I stopped and walked beside her.

“I am going to stay up all night: mother says I may; and I am going to fire off Tom Hemingway’s big cannon every fourth time, straight through till breakfast time,” I announced to her loftily.

“Dear me! I ought to be proud to be seen walking with such an important citizen,” she answered, with kindly playfulness. She added more gravely, after a moment’s pause: “Then Tom is out playing with the other boys, is he?”

“Why, of course!” I responded. “He always lets us stand around when he fires off his cannon. He’s got some ‘ringers’ this year too.”

I heard Miss Stratford murmur an impulsive “Thank God!” under her breath.

Full as the day had been of surprises, I could not help wondering that the fact of Tom’s ringers should stir up such profound emotions in the teacher’s breast. Since the subject so interested her, I went on with a long catalogue of Tom’s other pyrotechnic possessions, and from that to an account of his almost supernatural collection of postage-stamps. In a few minutes more I am sure I should have revealed to her the great secret of my life, which was my determination, in case I came to assume the victorious rôle and rank of Napoleon, to immediately make Tom a Marshal of the Empire.

But we had reached the post-office square. I had never before seen it so full of people.

Even to my boyish eyes the tragic line of division which cleft this crowd in twain was apparent. On one side, over by the Seminary, the youngsters had lighted a bonfire, and were running about it--some of the bolder ones jumping through it in frolicsome recklessness. Close by stood the band, now valiantly thumping out “John Brown’s Body” upon the noisy night air. It was quite dark by this time, but the musicians knew the tune by heart. So did the throng about them, and sang it with lusty fervor. The doors of the saloon toward the corner of the square were flung wide open. Two black streams of men kept in motion under the radiance of the big reflector-lamp over these doors--one going in, one coming out. They slapped one another on the back as they passed, with exultant screams and shouts. Every once in a while, when movement was for the instant blocked, some voice lifted above the others would begin a “Hip-hip-hip-hip--” and then would come a roar that fairly drowned the music.

On the post-office side of the square there was no bonfire. No one raised a cheer. A densely packed mass of men and women stood in front of the big square stone building, with its closed doors, and curtained windows upon which, from time to time, the shadow of some passing clerk, bareheaded and hurried, would be momentarily thrown. They waited in silence for the night mail to be sorted. If they spoke to one another, it was in whispers--as if they had been standing with uncovered heads at a funeral service in a graveyard. The dim light reflected over from the bonfire, or down from the shaded windows of the post-office, showed solemn, hard-lined, anxious faces. Their lips scarcely moved when they muttered little low-toned remarks to their neighbors. They spoke from the side of the mouth, and only on one subject.

“He went all through Fredericksburg without a scratch--”

“He looks so much like me--General Palmer told my brother he’d have known his hide in a tan-yard--”

“He’s been gone--let’s see--it was a year some time last April--”

“He was counting on a furlough the first of this month. I suppose nobody got one as things turned out--”

“He said, ‘No; it ain’t my style. I’ll fight as much as you like, but I won’t be nigger-waiter for no man, captain or no captain’--”

Thus I heard the scattered murmurs among the grown-up heads above me, as we pushed into the outskirts of the throng, and stood there, waiting for the rest. There was no sentence without a “he” in it. A stranger might have fancied that they were all talking of one man. I knew better. They were the fathers and mothers, the sisters, brothers, wives of the men whose regiments had been in that horrible three days’ fight at Gettysburg. Each was thinking and speaking of his own, and took it for granted the others would understand. For that matter, they all did understand. The town knew the name and family of every one of the twelve-score sons she had in this battle.

It is not very clear to me now why people all went to the post-office to wait for the evening papers that came in from the nearest big city. Nowadays they would be brought in bulk and sold on the street before the mail-bags had reached the post-office. Apparently that had not yet been thought of in our slow old town.

The band across the square had started up afresh with “Annie Lisle”--the sweet old refrain of “Wave willows, murmur waters,” comes back to me now after a quarter-century of forgetfulness--when all at once there was a sharp forward movement of the crowd. The doors had been thrown open, and the hallway was on the instant filled with a swarming multitude. The band had stopped as suddenly as it began, and no more cheering was heard. We could see whole troops of dark forms scudding toward us from the other side of the square.

“Run in for me--that’s a good boy--ask for Dr. Stratford’s mail,” the teacher whispered, bending over me.

It seemed an age before I finally got back to her, with the paper in its postmarked wrapper buttoned up inside my jacket. I had never been in so fierce and determined a crowd before, and I emerged from it at last, confused in wits and panting for breath. I was still looking about through the gloom in a foolish way for Miss Stratford, when I felt her hand laid sharply on my shoulder.

“Well--where is it?--did nothing come?” she asked, her voice trembling with eagerness, and the eyes which I had thought so soft and dove-like flashing down upon me as if she were Miss Pritchard, and I had been caught chewing gum in school.

I drew the paper out from under my roundabout, and gave it to her. She grasped it, and thrust a finger under the cover to tear it off. Then she hesitated for a moment, and looked about her. “Come where there is some light,” she said, and started up the street. Although she seemed to have spoken more to herself than to me, I followed her in silence, close to her side.

For a long way the sidewalk in front of every lighted store-window was thronged with a group of people clustered tight about some one who had a paper, and was reading from it aloud. Beside broken snatches of this monologue, we caught, now groans of sorrow and horror, now exclamations of proud approval, and even the beginnings of cheers, broken in upon by a general “’Sh-h!” as we hurried past outside the curb.

It was under a lamp in the little park nearly half-way up the hill that Miss Stratford stopped, and spread the paper open. I see her still, white-faced, under the flickering gaslight, her black curls making a strange dark bar between the pale-straw hat and the white of her shoulder shawl and muslin dress, her hands trembling as they held up the extended sheet. She scanned the columns swiftly, skimmingly for a time, as I could see by the way she moved her round chin up and down. Then she came to a part which called for closer reading. The paper shook perceptibly now, as she bent her eyes upon it. Then all at once it fell from her hands, and without a sound she walked away.

I picked the paper up and followed her along the gravelled path. It was like pursuing a ghost, so weirdly white did her summer attire now look to my frightened eyes, with such a swift and deathly silence did she move. The path upon which we were described a circle touching the four sides of the square. She did not quit it when the intersection with our street was reached, but followed straight round again toward the point where we had entered the park. This, too, in turn, she passed, gliding noiselessly forward under the black arches of the overhanging elms. The suggestion that she did not know she was going round and round in a ring startled my brain. I would have run up to her now if I had dared.

Suddenly she turned, and saw that I was behind her. She sank slowly into one of the garden-seats, by the path, and held out for a moment a hesitating hand toward me. I went up at this and looked into her face. Shadowed as it was, the change I saw there chilled my blood. It was like the face of some one I had never seen before, with fixed, wide-open, staring eyes which seemed to look beyond me through the darkness, upon some terrible sight no other could see.

“Go--run and tell--Tom--to go home! His brother--his brother has been killed,” she said to me, choking over the words as if they hurt her throat, and still with the same strange dry-eyed, far-away gaze covering yet not seeing me.

I held out the paper for her to take, but she made no sign, and I gingerly laid it on the seat beside her. I hung about for a minute or two longer, imagining that she might have something else to say--but no word came. Then, with a feebly inopportune “Well, good-by,” I started off alone up the hill.

It was a distinct relief to find that my companions were congregated at the lower end of the common, instead of their accustomed haunt farther up near my home, for the walk had been a lonely one, and I was deeply depressed by what had happened. Tom, it seems, had been called away some quarter of an hour before. All the boys knew of the calamity which had befallen the Hemingways. We talked about it, from time to time, as we loaded and fired the cannon which Tom had obligingly turned over to my friends. It had been out of deference to the feelings of the stricken household that they had betaken themselves and their racket off to the remote corner of the common. The solemnity of the occasion silenced criticism upon my conduct in forgetting to buy the powder. “There would be enough as long as it lasted,” Billy Norris said, with philosophic decision.

We speculated upon the likelihood of De Witt Hemingway’s being given a military funeral. These mournful pageants had by this time become such familiar things to us that the prospect of one more had no element of excitement in it, save as it involved a gloomy sort of distinction for Tom. He would ride in the first mourning-carriage with his parents, and this would associate us, as we walked along ahead of the band, with the most intimate aspects of the demonstration. We regretted now that the soldier company which we had so long projected remained still unorganized. Had it been otherwise we would probably have been awarded the right of the line in the procession. Some one suggested that it was not too late--and we promptly bound ourselves to meet after breakfast next day to organize and begin drilling. If we worked at this night and day, and our parents instantaneously provided us with uniforms and guns, we should be in time. It was also arranged that we should be called the De Witt C. Hemingway Fire Zouaves, and that Billy Norris should be side captain. The chief command would, of course, be reserved for Tom. We would specially salute him as he rode past in the closed carriage, and then fall in behind, forming his honorary escort.

None of us had known the dead officer closely, owing to his advanced age. He was seven or eight years older than even Tom. But the more elderly among our group had seen him play base-ball in the academy nine, and our neighborhood was still alive with legends of his early audacity and skill in collecting barrels and dry-goods boxes at night for election bonfires. It was remembered that once he carried away a whole front-stoop from the house of a little German tailor on one of the back streets. As we stood around the heated cannon, in the great black solitude of the common, our fancies pictured this redoubtable young man once more among us--not in his blue uniform, with crimson sash and sword laid by his side, and the gauntlets drawn over his lifeless hands, but as a taller and glorified Tom, in a roundabout jacket and copper-toed boots, giving the law on this his playground. The very cannon at our feet had once been his. The night air became peopled with ghosts of his contemporaries--handsome boys who had grown up before us, and had gone away to lay down their lives in far-off Virginia or Tennessee.

These heroic shades brought drowsiness in their train. We lapsed into long silences, punctuated by yawns, when it was not our turn to ram and touch off the cannon. Finally some of us stretched ourselves out on the grass, in the warm darkness, to wait comfortably for this turn to come.

What did come instead was daybreak--finding Billy Norris and myself alone constant to our all-night vow. We sat up and shivered as we rubbed our eyes. The morning air had a chilling freshness that went to my bones--and these, moreover, were filled with those novel aches and stiffnesses which beds were invented to prevent. We stood up, stretching out our arms, and gaping at the pearl-and-rose beginnings of the sunrise in the eastern sky. The other boys had all gone home, and taken the cannon with them. Only scraps of torn paper and tiny patches of burnt grass marked the site of our celebration.

My first weak impulse was to march home without delay, and get into bed as quickly as might be. But Billy Norris looked so finely resolute and resourceful that I hesitated to suggest this, and said nothing, leaving the initiative to him. One could see, by the most casual glance, that he was superior to mere considerations of unseasonableness in hours. I remembered now that he was one of that remarkable body of boys, the paper-carriers, who rose when all others were asleep in their warm nests, and trudged about long before breakfast distributing the _Clarion_ among the well-to-do households. This fact had given him his position in our neighborhood as quite the next in leadership to Tom Hemingway.

He presently outlined his plans to me, after having tried the centre of light on the horizon, where soon the sun would be, by an old brass compass he had in his pocket--a process which enabled him, he said, to tell pretty well what time it was. The paper wouldn’t be out for nearly two hours yet--and if it were not for the fact of a great battle, there would have been no paper at all on this glorious anniversary--but he thought we would go down-town and see what was going on around about the newspaper office. Forthwith we started. He cheered my faint spirits by assuring me that I would soon cease to be sleepy, and would, in fact, feel better than usual. I dragged my feet along at his side, waiting for this revival to come, and meantime furtively yawning against my sleeve.

Billy seemed to have dreamed a good deal, during our nap on the common, about the De Witt C. Hemingway Fire Zouaves. At least he had now in his head a marvellously elaborated system of organization, which he unfolded as we went along. I felt that I had never before realized his greatness, his born genius for command. His scheme halted nowhere. He allotted offices with discriminating firmness; he treated the question of uniforms and guns as a trivial detail which would settle itself; he spoke with calm confidence of our offering our services to the Republic in the autumn; his clear vision saw even the materials for a fife-and-drum corps among the German boys in the back streets. It was true that I appeared personally to play a meagre part in these great projects; the most that was said about me was that I might make a fair third-corporal. But Fate had thrown in my way such a wonderful chance of becoming intimate with Billy that I made sure I should swiftly advance in rank--the more so as I discerned in the background of his thoughts, as it were, a grim determination to make short work of Tom Hemingway’s aristocratic pretensions, once the funeral was over.

We were forced to make a detour of the park on our way down, because Billy observed some half-dozen Irish boys at play with a cannon inside, whom he knew to be hostile. If there had been only four, he said, he would have gone in and routed them. He could whip any two of them, he added, with one hand tied behind his back. I listened with admiration. Billy was not tall, but he possessed great thickness of chest and length of arm. His skin was so dark that we canvassed the theory from time to time of his having Indian blood. He did not discourage this, and he admitted himself that he was double-jointed.

The streets of the business part of the town, into which we now made our way, were quite deserted. We went around into the yard behind the printing-office, where the carrier-boys were wont to wait for the press to get to work; and Billy displayed some impatience at discovering that here too there was no one. It was now broad daylight, but through the windows of the composing-room we could see some of the printers still setting type by kerosene lamps.

We seated ourselves at the end of the yard on a big, flat, smooth-faced stone, and Billy produced from his pocket a number of “em” quads, so he called them, with which the carriers had learned from the printers’ boys to play a very beautiful game. You shook the pieces of metal in your hands and threw them on the stone; your score depended upon the number of nicked sides that were turned uppermost. We played this game in the interest of good-fellowship for a little. Then Billy told me that the carriers always played it for pennies, and that it was unmanly for us to do otherwise. He had no pennies at that precise moment, but would pay at the end of the week what he had lost; in the meantime there was my twenty cents to go on with. After this Billy threw so many nicks uppermost that my courage gave way, and I made an attempt to stop the game; but a single remark from him as to the military destiny which he was reserving for me, if I only displayed true soldierly nerve and grit, sufficed to quiet me once more, and the play went on. I had now only five cents left.

Suddenly a shadow interposed itself between the sunlight and the stone. I looked up, to behold a small boy with bare arms and a blackened apron standing over me, watching our game. There was a great deal of ink on his face and hands, and a hardened, not to say rakish expression in his eye.

“Why don’t you ‘jeff’ with somebody of your own size?” he demanded of Billy after having looked me over critically.

He was not nearly so big as Billy, and I expected to see the latter instantly rise and crush him, but Billy only laughed and said we were playing for fun; he was going to give me all my money back. I was rejoiced to hear this, but still felt surprised at the propitiatory manner Billy adopted toward this diminutive inky boy. It was not the demeanor befitting a side-captain--and what made it worse was that the strange boy loftily declined to be cajoled by it. He sniffed when Billy told him about the military company we were forming; he coldly shook his head, with a curt “Nixie!” when invited to join it; and he laughed aloud at hearing the name our organization was to bear.

“He ain’t dead at all--that De Witt Hemingway,” he said, with jeering contempt.

“Hain’t he though!” exclaimed Billy. “The news come last night. Tom had to go home--his mother sent for him--on account of it!”

“I’ll bet you a quarter he ain’t dead,” responded the practical inky boy. “Money up, though!”

“I’ve only got fifteen cents. I’ll bet you that, though,” rejoined Billy, producing my torn and dishevelled shin-plasters.

“All right! Wait here!” said the boy, running off to the building and disappearing through the door. There was barely time for me to learn from my companion that this printer’s apprentice was called “the devil,” and could not only whistle between his teeth and crack his fingers, but chew tobacco, when he reappeared, with a long narrow strip of paper in his hand. This he held out for us to see, indicating with an ebon forefinger the special paragraph we were to read. Billy looked at it sharply, for several moments in silence. Then he said to me: “What does it say there? I must ’a’ got some powder in my eyes last night.”

I read this paragraph aloud, not without an unworthy feeling that the inky boy would now respect me deeply:

“CORRECTION. Lieutenant De Witt C. Hemingway, of Company A, --th
New York, reported in earlier despatches among the killed, is
uninjured. The officer killed is Lieutenant Carl Heinninge, Company
F, same regiment.”

Billy’s face visibly lengthened as I read this out, and he felt us both looking at him. He made a pretence of examining the slip of paper again, but in a half-hearted way. Then he ruefully handed over the fifteen cents and, rising from the stone, shook himself.

“Them Dutchmen never was no good!” was what he said.

The inky boy had put the money in the pocket under his apron, and grinned now with as much enjoyment as dignity would permit him to show. He did not seem to mind any longer the original source of his winnings, and it was apparent that I could not with decency recall it to him. Some odd impulse prompted me, however, to ask him if I might have the paper he had in his hand. He was magnanimous enough to present me with the proof-sheet on the spot. Then with another grin he turned and left us.

Billy stood sullenly kicking with his bare toes into a sand-heap by the stone. He would not answer me when I spoke to him. It flashed across my perceptive faculties that he was not such a great man, after all, as I had imagined. In another instant or two it had become quite clear to me that I had no admiration for him whatever. Without a word I turned on my heel and walked determinedly out of the yard and into the street, homeward bent.

All at once I quickened my pace; something had occurred to me. The purpose thus conceived grew so swiftly that soon I found myself running. Up the hill I sped, and straight through the park. If the Irish boys shouted after me I knew it not, but dashed on heedless of all else save the one idea. I only halted, breathless and panting, when I stood on Dr. Stratford’s doorstep, and heard the night-bell inside jangling shrilly in response to my excited pull.

As I waited, I pictured to myself the old doctor as he would presently come down, half-dressed and pulling on his coat as he advanced. He would ask, eagerly, “Who is sick? Where am I to go?” and I would calmly reply that he unduly alarmed himself, and that I had a message for his daughter. He would, of course, ask me what it was, and I, politely but firmly, would decline to explain to any one but the lady in person. Just what might ensue was not clear--but I beheld myself throughout commanding the situation, at once benevolent, polished, and inexorable.

The door opened with unlooked-for promptness, while my self-complacent vision still hung in midair. Instead of the bald and spectacled old doctor, there confronted me a white-faced, solemn-eyed lady in a black dress, whom I did not seem to know. I stared at her, tongue-tied, till she said, in a low, grave voice, “Well, Andrew, what is it?”

Then of course I saw that it was Miss Stratford, my teacher, the person whom I had come to see. Some vague sense of what the sleepless night had meant in this house came to me as I gazed confusedly at her mourning, and heard the echo of her sad tones in my ears.

“Is some one ill?” she asked again.

“No; some one--some one is very well!” I managed to reply, lifting my eyes again to her wan face. The spectacle of its drawn lines and pallor all at once assailed my wearied and overtaxed nerves with crushing weight. I felt myself beginning to whimper, and rushing tears scalded my eyes. Something inside my breast seemed to be dragging me down through the stoop.

I have now only the recollection of Miss Stratford’s kneeling by my side, with a supporting arm around me, and of her thus unrolling and reading the proof-paper I had in my hand. We were in the hall now, instead of on the stoop, and there was a long silence. Then she put her head on my shoulder and wept. I could hear and feel her sobs as if they were my own.

“I--I didn’t think you’d cry--that you’d be so sorry,” I heard myself saying, at last, in despondent self-defence.

Miss Stratford lifted her head and, still kneeling as she was, put a finger under my chin to make me look her in her face. Lo! the eyes were laughing through their tears; the whole countenance was radiant once more with the light of happy youth and with that other glory which youth knows only once.

“Why, Andrew, boy,” she said, trembling, smiling, sobbing, beaming all at once, “didn’t you know that people cry for very joy sometimes?”

And as I shook my head she bent down and kissed me.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

[Since any list approaching a complete bibliography would be unduly
long, these suggestions are merely for the convenience of those
who, without special research, wish to read further and compare.
They remain after rejection of many essays that seem hardly to
advance the discussion.]

=Cairns, William B.=, _On the Development of American Literature
from 1815 to 1833_, with especial reference to periodicals;
Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Philology and
Literature Series, volume i, no. 1, pages 1–87.

=Canby, Henry Seidel=, _The Short Story_; Yale Studies in English,
xii (revised as introduction to _The Book of the Short Story_,
edited by Alexander Jessup and Henry Seidel Canby).

=Chassang, A.=, _Histoire du Roman ... dans l’Antiquité Grecque et
Latine_; Paris (2d ed.), 1862.

=Gilbert, E.=, _Le Roman en France pendant le xix^e Siècle_; Paris
(2d ed.), 1896.

=Hart, Walter Morris=, _The Evolution of the Short Story_; address
delivered before the Alumni Association of Haverford College,
June 12, 1901.

=Matthews, Brander=, _The Philosophy of the Short Story_; New
York, 1901. (This, the standard essay on the subject, is now
published separately, with notes and a few striking references.)

=Moland et d’Héricault=, _Nouvelles Françoises en Prose du
xiii^{me} Siècle_; Paris, 1856 (l’Empereur Constant, Amis
et Amile, le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane, la Comtesse de
Ponthieu, Aucassin et Nicolette; introduction, notes).

=Morris, William=, _Old French Romances done into English by
William Morris_, with introduction by Joseph Jacobs; London,
1896 (translation of the same tales as in the preceding, except
Aucassin and Nicolette).

=Peck, Harry Thurston=, _Trimalchio’s Dinner_ by Petronius Arbiter,
translated from the original Latin, with an introduction and
bibliographical appendix; New York, 1898. (The introduction
discusses prose fiction in Greece and Rome.)

=Perry, Bliss=, _A Study of Prose Fiction_; Boston, 1902.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Donald G. Mitchell, _American Lands and Letters_.

[2] _Literary Papers of William Austin_, Boston, 1890, page 43.

[3] See Prof. William B. Cairns, _On the Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833, with especial reference to periodicals_; Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Philology and Literature Series, volume i, No. 1.

[4] For a pungent characterisation of the annuals, see Prof. Henry A. Beers’s life of N. P. Willis (American Men of Letters), pages 77 and following.

[5] Fromentin (_Un Été dans le Sahara_, page 59; _Une Année dans le Sahel_, pages 215 and following) lays this down for painting.

[6] Bret Harte, _The Rise of the Short Story_, Cornhill Magazine, July, 1899.

[7] See Cairns, as above, page 64. The influence of the Spectator form in France appears strikingly in _L’Hermite de la Chaussée d’Antin_, ou observations sur les mœurs et les usages français au commencement du xix^{me} siècle, par M. de Jouy, Paris (collective volumes), 1813.

[8] Cross, _Development of the English Novel_, pages 24, 25.

[9] For Irving’s own view of his tales, see a quotation from his letters at page xix of Professor Brander Matthews’s edition of the _Tales of a Traveller_.

[10] “A rivulet of story meandering through a broad meadow of episode--a book of episodes with occasional digressions into the plot.” Kennedy’s preface to _Swallow Barn_.

[11] This is the character of the tales of Mme. de Genlis, of which a volume was published in New York, 1825: _New Moral Tales, selected and translated from the French of Mme. de Genlis, by an American_.

[12] Nodier adopts the same setting for the same purpose (cf. _Les Quatre Talismans_, 1838); but the habit is at least as old as Voltaire.

[13] So Godfrey Wallace’s _Esmeralda_, Atlantic Souvenir for 1829.

[14] Miss Sedgwick’s _Chivalric Sailor_ (1835) is essentially like our current historical romances. A typical instance is Dana’s _Paul Felton_ (1822).

[15] This tendency was confirmed, of course, by the predominance of Scott.

[16] Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, page 15.

[17] _Poetics_, chapter x.

[18] Poe’s review of Hawthorne’s tales (1842) begins by remarking that they are not all tales (Stedman and Woodberry edition of Poe, vol. vii, page 28).

[19] Poe’s tales were translated into French, German, Italian, and Spanish. He was reviewed in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Oct. 15, 1846 (new series, vol. xvi, page 341).

[20] See Aristotle’s _Poetics_, chapters vii and viii. The “classical” French drama deduced from Aristotle’s general principle of unity of action a strict system of practice. Of Poe’s adherence to this system a good instance is _The Cask of Amontillado_.

[21] In a review of Mrs. Sigourney, Southern Literary Messenger, volume ii, page 113 (January, 1836); quoted in Woodberry’s Life of Poe, page 94.

[22] In a review of Hawthorne, Graham’s Magazine, May, 1842; Stedman and Woodberry’s edition of Poe, volume vii, page 30; quoted in the appendix to Brander Matthews’s _Philosophy of the Short-Story_.

[23] A collection ascribed to Antonius Diogenes, compiled by Aristides of Miletus, was translated into Latin by Cornelius Sisenna (119–67 B.C.). The translation is lost.

[24] The _Cena_ of Petronius has more consistency, is in form more like the longer tales of antiquity.

[25] The object of Lucian is always satire. This, not any purely narrative end, determines his method. But it is worth observing that _The Ass_ is picaresque. For the rest, no single adventure of the string is more than anecdote.

[26] The Greek title is ποιμενικά.

[27] _E. g._, the fifteenth idyl of Theocritus, and the opening of the seventh oration of Dio Chrysostom. The latter, though brought in as anecdote, has extraordinary ingenuity and finish of form.

[28] See the introduction by Joseph Jacobs to _Old French Romances done into English by William Morris_.

[29] This, perhaps, is typically the _novella_; but Boccaccio will not fix the term: “intendo di raccontare cento _novelle, o favole o parabole o istorie, che dire le vogliamo_ ... nelle quali _novelle_....”--_Preface to Decameron._

[30] For reference in more detailed study of mediæval forms, this tentative classification of the _Decameron_ may be tabulated as follows:--

_anecdote_ 55

(a) _simple anecdote_ 34
I, all but nov. 4; III, nov. 4; V, nov. 4; VI, entire;
VIII, all but nov. 7 & 8; IX, nov. 1 & 7–10.

(b) _anecdote more artistically elaborated_ 21
III, nov. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6; V, nov. 10; VII, entire;
VIII, nov. 7; IX, nov. 2–5.

_scenario or summary romance_ 40
II, nov. 3–10; III, nov. 7–10; IV, entire; V, all
but nov. 4 & 10; X, entire.

_approaching short story_ 3
I, nov. 4; II, nov. 1; VIII, nov. 8.

_short story_ 2
II, nov. 2; IX, nov. 6. ----
100

[31] E. Gilbert, _Le roman en France pendant le xix^e siècle_, page 65; A. France, _La vie littéraire_, _I^{re} série_, page 47.

[32] Brander Matthews, _The Philosophy of the Short-Story_, page 65.

[33] _Colomba_ has one hundred and fifty pages.

[34] See an essay on _The Literary Influence of Sterne in France_, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, volume xvii, pages 221–236.

[35] It would be interesting, for instance, to determine whether Mérimée learned anything in form from Poushkin.

[36] Vide the excellent discourse of G. C. Verplanck, Esq., before the New York Historical Society.

[37] Not in the first edition.

[38] In New Hampshire.

[39] In the original publication the name is Patience.

[40] [“In place of this clause the first edition has: “Her figure, her air, her features,--all, in their very minutest development were those--were identically (I can use no other sufficient term) were identically those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A feeling of stupor,” etc.]

[41] Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Llandaff. See Chemical Essays, vol. v.

[42] The season of peach-blossoms was the only season of marriage in ancient China.

[43] The most common decorations of rooms, halls, and temples, in China, are ornamental scrolls or labels of colored paper or wood, painted and gilded, and hung over doors or windows, and inscribed with a line or couplet conveying some allusion to the circumstances of the inhabitant, or some pious or philosophical axiom. For instance, a poetical one recorded by Dr. Morrison:--

“From the pine forest the azure dragon ascends to the milky way,”--

typical of the prosperous man arising to wealth and honors.

INDEX

[_Titles of books and periodicals are in quotation marks; titles of
separate stories, in italics_]

Addison, a model for Irving, 6

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 34

_Alice Doane’s Appeal_ (Hawthorne), 13

Allegory, 10, 14, 23, 230

_Ambitious Guest, The_ (Hawthorne), 14

American literature, brevity of, 1;
wherein American, 1–4, 8, 35;
American life in, 3–6, 11, 12

“American Monthly Magazine, The,” 113

_Amis and Amile_, 25

Anecdote, 10, 24, 26, 27, 29

Annuals, American, 2, 4, 5, 9–12, 18

Antonius Diogenes, 24

“Appleton’s Journal,” 245

Apuleius, 30

Aristides of Miletus, 24

Aristotle, “Poetics,” 13, 19, 20

_Arsène Guillot_ (Mérimée), 31

Artificiality in short story, 20, 32

“Ass, The,” of Lucian, 24

“Atlantic Monthly, The,” 247

“Atlantic Souvenir, The,” 2, 4, 5, 11

_Aucassin and Nicolette_, 25, 27, 31

Austin, William, 1, 10, 12, 59–95;
biographical and critical sketch, 59;
_Joseph Natterstrom_, 1, 10;
_Peter Rugg_, 10, 12, 60–95

Bacon, Delia, 11

Balzac, Honoré de, 32–33;
_El verdugo_, _Les proscrits_, _La messe de l’athée_, _Z. Marcas_,
32;
form in, 32–33

Bandello, 29

Beckwith, Hiram W., 97

_Bee-Tree, The_ (Kirkland), 195–210

Beers, Henry A., 2, 177

_Ben Hadar_ (Paulding), 10

_Berenice_ (Poe), 2, 3, 16, 18, 21, 22, 33

Blackwell, Robert, 97

Boccaccio, “The Decameron,” 26–28, 30

“Boston Book, The,” 61

Brunetière, Ferdinand, 26

_Buckthorne and His Friends_ (Irving), 8

Bunner, Henry Cuyler, 289–301;
biographical and critical note, 289;
_The Third Figure of the Cotillion_, 289;
_The Love Letters of Smith_, 291–301

Burton’s “Gentleman’s Magazine,” 154

Cable, George W., 5, 34;
_Posson Jone_, 34

Cairns, William B., 2, 6, 325

Canby, Henry Seidel, 325

_Carmen_ (Mérimée), 31

_Catholic, The_, 4

“Cena Trimalchionis,” of Petronius, 24

“Cent nouvelles nouvelles, Les,” 28, 30

Character, development of, 13, 26, 27

Chassang, A., 325

Chaucer, 25, 28;
_The Man of Law_, _The Pardoner_, _Troilus and Criseyde_, 25

_Chivalric Sailor, The_ (Sedgwick), 11

Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain), 4, 34;
_The Jumping Frog_, 34

Climax (_see_ Culmination)

_Colomba_ (Mérimée), 31

_Combe à l’homme mort, La_ (Nodier), 29, 30

Compression of time, in short story, 8, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, 27, 28,
33 (_see_ Unity)

“Condensed Novels” (Harte), 229

Consistency of form, 9, 23, 26–28, 31, 32, 33 (_see_ Unity)

_Conte_ and _nouvelle_, 30, 31, 33

“Contes de la Reine de Navarre” (_see_ “Heptameron”)

Cooper, James Fenimore, 1, 5

Cornelius Sisenna, 24

Culmination, in short story, 7, 8, 10, 20–22, 26–28, 31, 32, 33

_Damnation of Theron Ware, The_ (Frederic), 303

Dana, Richard Henry, _Paul Felton_, 11

_Daphne, The_ (Webster), 245

_Daphnis and Chloe_, 24–25

“Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil” (Willis), 178

Daudet, Alphonse, 30, 34

_David Swan_ (Hawthorne), 14

“Decameron, The,” 26–28

De Quincey, Thomas, 30

Descriptive sketches, 9, 12, 14, 31, 99, 113, 193

Dialogue and monologue, 19, 27

_Diamond Lens, The_ (O’Brien), 211

Dickens, Charles, influence of, on Bret Harte, 230;
on O’Brien, 211

Dio Chrysostom, 25

Directness of movement, 18, 19, 20, 26, 27

Documentary interest, in fiction, 3, 30

Dominant, use of a single detail as, 16, 21, 22

Drama, influence of, on novel and short story, 26, 34

Dumas, Alexandre, influence of, on Bret Harte, 230

Edgeworth, Maria, 26

_Emigrant’s Daughter, The_, 5

_End of the Passage, The_ (Kipling), 212

_Enlèvement de la redoute, Le_ (Mérimée), 31

_Esmeralda, The_ (Wallace), 11

Essay tendency in tales, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, 18, 32

_Ethan Brand_ (Hawthorne), 13

_Eve of the Fourth, The_ (Frederic), 305–324

Exposition in tales (_see_ Essay tendency)

_Fall of the House of Usher, The_ (Poe), 18, 154–176

_Fancy’s Show Box_ (Hawthorne), 14

_Filleule du Seigneur, La_ (Nodier), 30

Flaubert, Gustave, 30

Flint, Timothy, 5

_Florus, King, and the Fair Jehane_, 25

_Fool’s Moustache, A_ (Webster), 245

“Forest Life” (Kirkland), 193

France, Anatole, 29

Frederic, Harold, 303–324;
biographical and critical note, 303;
“In the Sixties,” 303;
_The Eve of the Fourth_, 305–324;
_The Damnation of Theron Ware_, 303

Fromentin, Eugène, 3

Frontier, tales of the, 5, 10, 12, 97–127, 193–210, 229–243

Gautier, Théophile, 30, 33;
_Le nid de rossignols_, _La mort amoureuse_, 33;
preferred _nouvelle_ to _conte_, diffuseness, influence of Sterne,
tendency to mere description, likeness to Poe, 33

Genlis, Mme. de, moral tales of, 10

“Gentleman’s Magazine and American Monthly Review,” Burton’s, 154

_German Student, The_ (Irving), 8

Gift-books (_see_ Annuals)

Gilbert, E., 29, 325

Gilman, Mrs., 5

“Golden Era, The,” 229

Goldsmith, influence on Irving, 6

Gradation, 20–23, 32 (_see_ Sequence)

_Great Good Place, The_ (James), 34

_Great Stone Face, The_ (Hawthorne), 14

Hale, Mrs., 5

Hall, James, 5, 9, 11, 12, 97–112;
biographical and critical note, 97;
“The Illinois Intelligencer,” “The Illinois Magazine,” “The Western
Monthly Magazine,” “Letters from the West,” “Sketches of the
West,” “Notes on the Western States,” “The Wilderness and the
War Path,” 97;
“The Western Souvenir,” 5, 97;
_The Indian Hater_, _Pete Featherton_, 5;
_The Village Musician_, 9;
_The French Village_, 5, 9, 12, 99–112

Harmonisation, 16, 23

“Harper’s Monthly Magazine,” 212, 213

Hart, Walter Morris, 325

Harte, Francis Bret, 4, 229–243;
biographical and critical note, 229;
“Condensed Novels,” 229;
_The Luck of Roaring Camp_, 229, 230;
_Johnson’s Old Woman_, _Mrs. Skaggs’s Husbands_, _The Iliad of
Sandy Bar_, _Tennessee’s Partner_, 230;
_The Outcasts of Poker Flat_, 231–243;
influence of Dickens, 230;
of Dumas, 230;
tendency to melodrama, 230;
local truth, 229;
symbolism, 230

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 2, 5, 9, 10, 12–15, 16, 18, 23, 30, 31, 32, 59,
129–142, 230;
bent not toward short story, 12–15, 31;
allegory, symbolism, 14, 23, 230;
vocabulary, 16;
tendency toward description, 14;
toward essay, 14, 15, 18, 30;
expository introductions, 18;
unity compared with Poe’s, 23;
likeness to Nodier, 30;
“Twice-Told Tales,” 131;
_The Gentle Boy_, 12;
_The Wives of the Dead_, 12, 13;
_Roger Malvin’s Burial_, _Alice Doane’s Appeal_, _Ethan Brand_, 13;
_The Scarlet Letter_, 13, 14;
_Sunday at Home_, _Sights from a Steeple_, _Main Street_, _The
Village Uncle_, _The Ambitious Guest_, _Fancy’s Show Box_,
_David Swan_, _The Snow Image_, _The Great Stone Face_, 14;
_The Marble Faun_, 15;
_The White Old Maid_, 13, 131–142;
_The Seven Vagabonds_, 230

“Heptameron, The,” of the Queen of Navarre, 29

_Hermit of the Prairies, The_, 5

“Hermite de la Chaussée d’Antin, Le,” 6

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 59

Historical tales, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11

Hoax-story, 10, 34

_Horla, Le_ (Maupassant), 212

_Iliad of Sandy Bar, The_ (Harte), 230

“Illinois Intelligencer, The,” 97

“Illinois Magazine, The,” 97

“In the Sixties” (Frederic), 305

_Indian Hater, The_ (Hall), 5

_Inlet of Peach Blossoms, The_ (Willis), 179–191

_Inroad of the Nabajo, The_ (Pike), 115–127

Intensity, in short story, 12, 22, 32, 34

Introductions to tales, 7, 10, 17, 18, 19, 31, 99, 195

Irving, Washington, 1, 4, 5, 6–9, 18, 29, 37–58, 143, 289;
looseness of form, 7, 8;
characterisation, 7;
unity of tone, 7;
influence of, 8, 9, 143, 289;
introductions, 18;
“The Sketch Book,” 7;
“Tales of a Traveller,” 8, 143;
_The Wife_, _The Widow and Her Son_, _The Pride of the Village_,
_The Spectre Bridegroom_, 7;
_Buckthorne and His Friends_, _The German Student_, 8;
_Philip of Pokanoket_, 9;
_Rip Van Winkle_, 7, 8, 37–58

Jacobs, Joseph, 25

James, Henry, 34

_Jean François-les-bas-bleus_ (Nodier), 30

_Johnson’s Old Woman_ (Harte), 230

_Joseph Natterstrom_ (Austin), 1, 10

Jouy, M. de, 6

_Jumping Frog, The_ (Mark Twain), 34

Keepsakes (_see_ Annuals)

Kennedy, John Pendleton, 5, 9;
“Swallow Barn,” 9

Kinetic narrative, and static, 22

_King Pest_ (Poe), 18, 22

Kipling, Rudyard, 34, 212;
_The End of the Passage_, 212

Kirkland, Mrs., 5, 6, 193–210;
biographical and critical note, 193;
“A New Home--Who’ll Follow,” “Forest Life,” “Western Clearings,”
193;
_The Bee-Tree_, 195–210

Kirkland, William, 193

Landor, Walter Savage, 30

“Letters from Arkansas” (Pike), 113

“Letters from the West” (Hall), 97

_Lidivine_ (Nodier), 30

_Ligeia_ (Poe), 16, 18

“Literati” (Poe), 193

Local color, 3–6, 9, 11, 12, 34, 97, 113, 193, 229, 303

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 143–151;
biographical and critical note, 143;
“Outre-Mer,” 143;
_The Notary of Périgueux_, 145–151

Longus, 24, 25

_Love Letters of Smith, The_ (Bunner), 291–301

Lucian, 24

_Luck of Roaring Camp, The_ (Harte), 229, 230

Magazines, American, 2–5, 9, 34 (and see separate titles)

_Main Street_ (Hawthorne), 14

_Maison Tellier, La_ (Maupassant), 230

_Man of Law, The_ (Chaucer), 25

_Marble Faun, The_ (Hawthorne), 15

Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre, the “Heptameron” of, 29

_Marjorie Daw_ (Aldrich), 34

_Mary Dyre_ (Sedgwick), 11

_Matron of Ephesus, The_ (Petronius), 24

Matthews, Brander, 8, 11, 22, 31, 212, 325;
edition of Irving’s “Tales of a Traveller,” 8;
“The Philosophy of the Short-Story,” 11, 22, 31, 212, 325

Maupassant, Guy de, 30, 34, 212, 230;
_La maison Tellier_, 230;
_Le Horla_, 212

Mediæval tales, 23–29, 31

Melodrama, tendency toward, in earlier American tales, 4, 5, 11;
in O’Brien, 211;
in Bret Harte, 230

Mérimée, Prosper, 30–34;
narrative conciseness, 31;
preferred _nouvelle_ to _conte_, 31, 34;
and Poe, 32;
_Carmen_, _Colomba_, _Arsène Guillot_, _L’enlèvement de la
redoute_, _Tamango_, _La vision de Charles XI_, _Le vase
étrusque_, 31;
_La Vénus d’Ille_, 31, 32

_Messe de l’athée, La_ (Balzac), 32

_Methodist’s Story, The_, 4

_Metzengerstein_ (Poe), 16, 18, 22

Milesian tales, 24

“Mirror, The New York,” 177, 178

_Miss Eunice’s Glove_ (Webster), 247–266

Mitchell, Donald G., 1

Mitford, Mary Russell, 193

Moland and d’Héricault, 325

Monologue, Poe’s, 19

Moral tales, 4, 9, 10, 14, 30;
allegory in, 10, 14;
of Mme. de Genlis, 10;
of Nodier, 10, 30;
oriental setting for, 10

_Morella_ (Poe), 16, 17, 18, 21, 22

Morris, William, 25, 326

_Morte Amoureuse, La_ (Gautier), 33

_Mrs. Skaggs’s Husbands_ (Harte), 230

Musset, Alfred de, 33

_My Wife’s Tempter_ (O’Brien), 211

Narantsauk, 4

Nationality in literature, 3–6, 11, 12

“New England Galaxy, The,” 61

“New England Magazine, The,” 2, 131

“New Home, A,--Who’ll Follow” (Kirkland), 193

“New York Mirror, The,” 177, 178

_Nid de rossignols, Le_ (Gautier), 33

Nodier, Charles, 10, 29, 30, 31;
preferred _nouvelle_ to _conte_, 30, 31;
similarity to Hawthorne, 30;
_Les quatre talismans_, 10;
_La combe à l’homme mort_, 29, 30;
_Smarra_, _Jean François-les-bas-bleus_, _Lidivine_, _La filleule
du Seigneur_, 30

“Notes on the Western States” (Hall), 97

_Nouvelle_, and _conte_, 30, 31, 33;
and _roman_, 31

Novel and short story, 8, 12, 13, 15, 21, 25, 26

Novelette, 31

_Novella_, 27, 30

O’Brien, Fitz-James, 211–228;
biographical and critical note, 211;
_The Diamond Lens_, _The Wondersmith_, _Tommatoo_, _My Wife’s
Tempter_, 211;
_What Was It?_, 213–228

_Operation in Money, An_ (Webster), 245

Oriental tales, 10, 25

_Outcasts of Poker Flat, The_ (Harte), 231–243

“Outre-Mer” (Longfellow), 143

“Overland Monthly, The,” 229, 231

_Owner of “Lara,” The_ (Webster), 245

_Pardoner, The_ (Chaucer), 25

Pastoral romance, 25

_Paul Felton_ (Dana), 11

Paulding, James K., _Ben Hadar_, 10

Peck, Harry Thurston, 326

“Pencillings by the Way” (Willis), 177

Periodicals (_see_ Annuals, Magazines)

Perry, Bliss, 326

_Pete Featherton_ (Hall), 5

_Peter Rugg, the Missing Man_ (Austin), 10, 12, 60–95

Petronius, “Cena Trimalchionis,” “Satyricon,” 24

_Philip of Pokanoket_ (Irving), 9

Picaresque story, 24

Pike, Albert, 12, 113–127;
biographical and critical note, 113;
“Prose Sketches and Poems,” 12, 115;
“Letters from Arkansas,” 113;
“Hymns to the Gods,” 113;
_The Inroad of the Nabajo_, 115–127

Plot (_see_ Compression, Culmination Novel, Short story, Time-lapse,
Unity)

Plots, simple or complex, 12, 13

Poe, Edgar Allan, 3, 4, 9, 12, 15–23, 32, 33, 153–176, 193, 211;
genius for form, 9, 16;
preoccupation with structure, 16;
review of Hawthorne, 14, 22;
characters, 16;
detective stories, 16, 20;
harmonisation, 16, 23;
refrain, 16, 17, 21;
vocabulary, 16, 17;
cadence, 16;
suppression of introductions, 18, 19;
simplification for directness, 19;
setting, 19;
habit of monologue, 19;
gradation, 20–23;
artificiality, 20, 32;
grotesque, 22;
kinetic narrative, and static, 22;
conception of unity, 22, 23;
application of Schlegel, 22;
review of Mrs. Sigourney, 22;
symbolism, 23;
and Hawthorne, 18, 20, 23;
and Mérimée, 32;
and Gautier, 33;
and O’Brien, 211;
“Literati,” 193;
_Berenice_, 2, 3, 16, 18, 21, 22, 33;
_Metzengerstein_, 16, 18, 22;
_Morella_, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22;
_Ligeia_, 16, 18;
_King Pest_, 18, 22;
_The Tell-Tale Heart_, 18;
_The Fall of the House of Usher_, 18, 154–176

“Poetics,” of Aristotle, 13, 19, 20

“Portfolio, The,” 97

_Posson Jone_ (Cable), 34

Poushkin, 34

Premonition, 21, 31

_Pride of the Village, The_ (Irving), 7

_Proscrits, Les_ (Balzac), 32

“Prose Sketches and Poems” (Pike), 12, 114

“Puck,” 289

_Quatre talismans, Les_ (Nodier), 10

_Reminiscence of Federalism, A_ (Sedgwick), 11

Richepin, 34

_Rip Van Winkle_ (Irving), 7, 8, 37–58

_Roger Malvin’s Burial_ (Hawthorne), 13

Romances, short, 4, 10, 11, 25, 27;
American, 4, 11;
summary or scenario, 10, 25;
pastoral, 25;
mediæval, 25–28, 29

Romanticism, 4, 7, 8, 11

“Satyricon” (Petronius), 24

_Scarlet Letter, The_ (Hawthorne), 13, 14

Scenario, or summary romance, 10, 13, 24, 26, 27

Schlegel, Poe’s application of, 22

Scott, Sir Walter, influence of, 11, 37

Sedgwick, Charlotte M., _A Reminiscence of Federalism_, _Mary Dyre_,
_The Chivalric Sailor_, 11

Sequence of incidents, 7, 8, 9, 10, 16, 20–23 (_see_ Gradation)

Setting, 16 (_see_ Local color)

_Seven Vagabonds, The_ (Hawthorne), 230

“Short Sixes” (Bunner), 291

Short story, in antiquity, 24, 25;
in middle age, 25–29;
in France, 29–35;
in America, 1–23, 34, 35;
in England, 33, 34;
in other countries, 34;
popularity of, 3, 34;
distinct from tale and novel, 2, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 21, 23–27,
29–31;
unity of, 7, 8, 11–13, 15–23;
intensity of, 12, 13, 32 (_see_ Unity)

“Short-Story, The Philosophy of the” (Matthews), 11, 12, 31, 212, 325

_Sights from a Steeple_ (Hawthorne), 14

Simple plots and complex, 13–15, 25, 26

Simplification of narrative mechanism, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 17–20, 23
(_see_ Unity)

Singleness, 13, 15, 19, 31 (_see_ Unity)

Situation, a single, in short story, 12, 26, 27, 28, 31

“Sketch Book, The” (Irving), 7, 8, 37

“Sketches of the West” (Hall), 97

_Smarra_ (Nodier), 30

_Snow Image, The_ (Hawthorne), 14

“Southern Literary Messenger, The,” 2, 33

“Spectator, The,” 6, 7, 9;
influence on Irving, 6, 7;
on the British novel, 6;
in France, 6;
on J. P. Kennedy, 9;
in Virginia, 9

_Spectre Bridegroom, The_ (Irving), 7

Static narrative, and kinetic, 22

Sterne, Lawrence, influence on Gautier, 33

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 34

Stockton, Frank R., _The Wreck of the Thomas Hyke_, 34

_Sunday at Home_ (Hawthorne), 14

Suspense, 10, 16, 20

“Swallow Barn” (Kennedy), 9

Symbolism, 10, 14, 23, 230

Tale, a constant literary form, 25, 26;
distinct from short story (which see);
anecdote, 10, 24, 26, 29;
summary or fragmentary, 13, 15, 23, 24, 27;
moral, 4, 9, 10, 14, 30;
historical, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11;
yarn, 10, 34;
oriental, 10, 25

Tales, ancient, 23–25;
Milesian, 24;
mediæval, 25–29, 31;
modern French, 30;
American, before 1835, 1–12

“Tales of a Traveller” (Irving), 8, 143

_Tamango_ (Mérimée), 31

Taylor, Bayard, 267–287;
biographical and critical note, 267;
_Who Was She?_, 269–287

_Tell-Tale Heart, The_ (Poe), 18

_Tennessee’s Partner_ (Harte), 230

Theocritus, the fifteenth idyl of, 25

Thoreau, Henry David, 1

Time-lapse, management of, 8, 11, 12, 13, 19–21, 27–29, 31, 32

“Token, The,” 2, 5

_Tommatoo_ (O’Brien), 211

Totality of interest, Poe’s principle of, 22

_Troilus and Criseyde_ (Chaucer), 25

Unities, the classical, 19, 20, 34, 289

Unity, in short story, of purpose, 8, 16–23;
of tone, 7, 16–19, 22, 23;
of form, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16–19, 22, 23, 25–29, 31–33, 59, 113,
143, 177, 193, 211, 230, 289;
of time, 8, 11, 12, 13, 19–21, 27–29, 31, 32;
of place, 12, 13, 19, 27, 29, 32;
by suppression, 19, 32;
and artificiality, 20, 32

_Vase étrusque, Le_ (Mérimée), 31

_Vénus d’Ille, La_ (Mérimée), 31

_Verdugo, El_ (Balzac), 32

_Village Uncle, The_ (Hawthorne), 14

_Vision de Charles XI, La_ (Mérimée), 31

Voltaire, 10

Wallace, Godfrey, _The Esmeralda_, 11

Webster, Albert Falvey, 245–266;
biographical and critical note, 245;
_An Operation in Money_, _The Daphne_, _A Fool’s Moustache_, _The
Owner of Lara_, 245;
_Miss Eunice’s Glove_, 247–266

“Weekly Californian, The,” (Harte), 229

“Western Clearings” (Kirkland), 193, 195

“Western Monthly Magazine, The” (Hall), 97

“Western Monthly Review, The,” 5

“Western Souvenir, The” (Hall), 5, 97, 99

_What Was It?_ (O’Brien), 213–228

_White Old Maid, The_ (Hawthorne), 13, 131–142

Whitman, Walt, 3

_Who Was She?_ (Taylor), 269–287

_Widow and Her Son, The_ (Irving), 7

_Wife, The_ (Irving), 7

“Wilderness and the War Path, The” (Hall), 97

Wilkins, Mary E., 11

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 177–191, 193;
biographical and critical note, 177;
“Pencillings by the Way,” “Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil,” 177;
_The Inlet of Peach Blossoms_, 179–191

_Wives of the Dead, The_ (Hawthorne), 12, 13

_Wondersmith, The_ (O’Brien), 211

_Wreck of the Thomas Hyke, The_ (Stockton), 34

Yarn, 10, 34

_Z. Marcas_ (Balzac), 32

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of the pages that referenced them, have been collected, sequentially renumbered, and placed at the end of the book.

The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.