The red-hot dollar, and other stories from the Black Cat

By H. D. UMBSTAETTER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JACK LONDON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY BOSTON MDCCCCXI
Copyright, 1895, 1896, 1900, 1904, 1909 By The Shortstory Publishing Company
Copyright, 1911
By L. C. Page & Company (INCORPORATED)
All rights reserved
First Impression, July, 1911
Electrotyped and Printed by THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
It is indeed a pleasure to write an introduction for a collection of tales by Mr. H. D. Umbstaetter. His stories are Black Cat stories, and by such designation is meant much. The field of the Black Cat is unique, and a Black Cat story is a story apart from all other short stories. While Mr. Umbstaetter may not have originated such a type of story, he made such a type possible, and made many a writer possible. I know he made me possible. He saved my literary life, if he did not save my literal life. And I think he was guilty of this second crime, too.
For months, without the smallest particle of experience, I had been attempting to write something marketable. Everything I possessed was in pawn, and I did not have enough to eat. I was sick, mentally and physically, from lack of nourishment. I had once read in a Sunday supplement that the minimum rate paid by the magazines was ten dollars per thousand words. But during all the months devoted to storming the magazine field, I had received back only manuscripts. Still I believed implicitly what I had read in the Sunday supplement.
As I say, I was at the end of my tether, beaten out, starved, ready to go back to coal-shoveling or ahead to suicide. Being very sick in mind and body, the chance was in favor of my self-destruction. And then, one morning, I received a short, thin letter from a magazine. This magazine had a national reputation. It had been founded by Bret Harte. It sold for twenty-five cents a copy. It held a four-thousand-word story of mine, To the Man on Trail. I was modest. As I tore the envelope across the end, I expected to find a check for no more than forty dollars. Instead, I was coldly informed (by the Assistant Sub-scissors, I imagine), that my story was available and that on publication I would be paid for it the sum of five dollars.