Chapter I: Front Matter

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917

AND THE

YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY

EDITED BY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN

EDITOR OF "THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915," "THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1916," ETC.

BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1918, by The Boston Transcript Company

Copyright, 1917, by The Pictorial Review Company, The Century Company, Charles Scribner's Sons, The Curtis Publishing Company, Harper & Brothers, The Metropolitan Magazine Company, The Atlantic Monthly Company, The Crowell Publishing Company, The International Magazine Company, The Pagan Publishing Company, The Stratford Journal, and The Boston Transcript Company

Copyright, 1918, by Edwina Stanton Babcock, Thomas Beer, Maxwell Struthers Burt, Francis Buzzell, Irvin S. Cobb, Charles Caldwell Dobie, H. G. Dwight, Edna Ferber, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Susan Glaspell Cook, Frederick Stuart Greene, Richard Matthews Hallet, Fannie Hurst, Fanny Kemble Costello, Burton Kline, Vincent O'Sullivan, Lawrence Perry, Mary Brecht Pulver, Wilbur Daniel Steele, and Mary Synon

Copyright, 1918, by Edward J. O'Brien

Copyright, 1918, by Small, Maynard & Company, Inc.

Fourth printing, January, 1919 Fifth printing, September, 1919 Sixth printing, August, 1920 Seventh printing, August, 1921

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.

* * *

CONTENTS[1]

PAGE