I have asked permission to extract this episode from a longer article. Professor Sharp was as generous in this as he has been helpful in other matters relating to selections which make up this volume of narratives.
The paragraphs which precede the present beginning are expository in nature, and while they bear interestingly upon the incident, they are not a necessary part of the narrative. The selection breathes the very atmosphere of highly hazardous adventure; and even though the writer quickly generates in us a feeling of confidence in the superior powers of Ranchman Wade and Peroxide Jim, we nevertheless restlessly live through the moments of the wild stampede as it makes its mad and frightened way along the perilous edge of the rim-rock.
IN THE PASHA'S GARDEN
H. G. Dwight is the son of an American missionary to the Near East, and lived for many years in Constantinople. Being compelled to leave Turkey after her entrance into the war, he returned to the United States and is now in the government service.
Mr. Dwight in this Stamboul romance has invested his scenes with the languorous and mystical spirit of the orientalism in which his characters so naturally move. We are here far away from the O. Henry type of story, with its startling cleverness, crisp humor, and ingenious surprise. We share instead the leisure and luxury of this eastern way of living—felt all the more strongly because of the presence of the French wife whose independent customs and bearing offend the servants of the easy-going Pasha. The interest, however, is not confined to the atmosphere. We are soon breathing the mystery of the kiosque—a mystery which the author never fully solves, but leaves silently merged in the intangible charm of the pervading orientalism.
LITTLE SELVES
Mary Lerner, a story-writer of Cambridge, Massachusetts, first won attention by the publication of 'Little Selves' in the Atlantic Monthly.
I have included this selection because it reveals so delicately and so immediately that quality which we may somewhat paradoxically call romantic realism. The scenes which Miss Lerner's old Irish woman so intimately recalls are all peopled by the real creatures of a remembered past, principally her little selves as they lived through their childish joys and sorrows and swiftly sequent perplexities. But each of these experiences, so intimately and realistically portrayed, is seen through memories tinged with the charm of a happy Celtic romance.