TEN REPRESENTATIVE STORIES OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE
“After He was Dead,” Melville Davisson Post. Atlantic Monthly, April, 1911.
“The Attack on the Mill,” Émile Zola. Translated in Great Short Stories.
“The Taking of the Redoubt,” Prosper Mérimée. Translated in Short-Story Masterpieces.
“The Man Who Would be King,” Rudyard Kipling. In The Phantom Rickshaw (and other stories).
“The Sire de Malétroit’s Door,” Robert Louis Stevenson. In New Arabian Nights.
“The Diamond Lens,” Fitz-James O’Brien. In Short Story Classics, American.
“The Young Man in a Hurry,” Robert W. Chambers. Harper’s Magazine, Aug., 1903.
“A Fight for the Tsarina,” Maurus Jókai. Translated in Masterpieces of Fiction.
“The Window that Monsieur Forgot,” Mary Imlay Taylor. The Booklovers Magazine, Jan., 1904.
“Blood o’ Innocence,” George W. Knapp. Lippincott’s Magazine, Nov., 1907.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] Author’s Note.—Corporals were formerly the chief officers of the Corsican communes after they had rebelled against their feudal lords. To-day they still occasionally give the name to a man who—because of his property, his relationships, and his business—commands a certain influence, and a sort of effective magistracy over a parish or a canton. The Corsicans divide themselves, after ancient custom, into five castes: gentlemen (of whom some, magnifiques, are of higher estate, and some of lower, signori), corporals, citizens, plebeians, and foreigners.
[14] Author’s Note.—This word is synonymous with outlaw.
[15] Author’s Note.—Voltigeurs, that is, a body raised by the government of late years which acts in conjunction with the police to maintain order.
[16] Author’s Note.—The uniform of the voltigeurs was at that period brown, with a yellow collar.
[17] Author’s Note.—A leather belt which served the joint purpose of a cartridge box and pocket for dispatches and orders.
[18] Author’s Note.—Buon giorno, fratello—the ordinary salutation of the Corsicans.
II
STORIES OF MYSTERY AND FANTASY
The Purloined Letter.—Edgar Allan Poe
The Monkey’s Paw.—W. W. Jacobs
The fact is ... that, in the riddle story, the detective was an after-thought, or, more accurately, a deus ex machina to make the story go. The riddle had to be unriddled; and who could do it so naturally and readily as a detective? The detective, as Poe saw him, was a means to this end; and it was only afterwards that writers perceived his availability as a character. Lecoq accordingly becomes a figure in fiction, and Sherlock, while he was as yet a novelty, was nearly as attractive as the complications in which he involved himself.—Julian Hawthorne, Introduction to The Lock and Key Library.
The literature of ghosts is very ancient. In visions of the night, and in the lurid vapors of mystic incantations, figures rise and smile, or frown and disappear. The Witch of Endor murmurs her spell, and “an old man cometh up, and he is covered with a mantle.” Macbeth takes a bond of fate, and from Hecate’s caldron, after the apparition of an armed head and that of a bloody child, “an apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises.” The wizard recounts to Lochiel his warning vision, and Lochiel departs to his doom. There are stories of the Castle of Otranto and of The Three Spaniards, and the infinite detail of “singular experiences,” which make our conscious daily life the frontier and border-land of an impinging world of mystery.—George William Curtis, Introduction to Modern Ghosts.