Short Stories for English Courses

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 older literary classics? This is the question asked by an ever- increasing number of thoughtful teachers. They have no wish to displace or to discredit the classics. On the contrary, they love and revere them. But they do wish to give their pupils something additional, something that pulses with present life, that is characteristic of to-day. The children, too, wonder that, with the great literary outpouring going on about them, they must always fill 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, and the railway limited. It has achieved high art, yet conforms to the modern demand that our literature—since it must be read with despatch, if read at all—be compact and compelling. Moreover, the short story is with us in almost overwhelming numbers, and is probably here to stay. Indeed, our boys and girls are somewhat appalled at the quantity of material from which they must select their reading, and welcome any instruction that enables them to know the good from the bad. It is certain, therefore, that, whatever else they may throw into the educational discard when they leave the high school, they will keep and use anything they may have learned about this form of literature which has become so powerful a factor in our daily life.