ATLANTIC NARRATIVES

Modern Short Stories
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
CHARLES SWAIN THOMAS, A.M.
Head of Department of English, Cleveland School of Education
Lecturer in the Harvard Summer School
SECOND SERIES

The Atlantic Monthly Press
BOSTON
Copyright, 1918, by
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, INC.

CONTENTS

[Introduction] [vii]
[The Lie]Mary Antin[1]
[Blue Reefers]Elizabeth Ashe[29]
[The Debt]Kathleen Carman[40]
[Seth Miles and the Sacred Fire]Cornelia A. P. Comer[50]
[Buried Treasure]Mazo De La Roche[69]
[The Princess of Make-believe]Annie Hamilton Donnell[94]
[The Two Apples]James Edmund Dunning[100]
[The Purple Star]Rebecca Hooper Eastman[105]
[Ruggs—R.O.T.C.]William Addleman Ganoe[125]
[The Way of Life]Lucy Huffaker[145]
[A Year in a Coal-mine]Joseph Husband[159]
[Woman’s Sphere]S. H. Kemper[181]
[Babanchik]Christina Krysto[190]
[Rosita]Ellen Mackubin[207]
[Perjured]Edith Ronald Mirrielees[222]
[What Mr. Grey Said]Margaret Prescott Montague [237]
[A Soldier of the Legion]E. Morlae[249]
[The Boulevard of Rogues]Meredith Nicholson[274]
[What Happened To Alanna]Kathleen Norris[282]
[Spendthrifts]Laura Spencer Portor[298]
[Children Wanted]Lucy Pratt[323]
[The Squire]Elsie Singmaster[339]
[Gregory and the Scuttle]Charles Haskins Townsend[350]
[In November]Edith Wyatt[357]
[Biographical and Interpretative Notes][369]

INTRODUCTION

FOR those readers who have from early childhood been taught that the best things are the old things, it is oftentimes difficult to revert in imagination to the times when such classics as Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Progress, and Robinson Crusoe, new and unread, were just beginning to make their first tentative steps in the march toward the unknown and unseen goal of enduring fame. Yet the intrinsic literary worth of these classics was obviously just as firm in those far-off days of their initial appearance as in these present days of their acquired renown.

But in these present days, with the improved printing-presses moving at high speed and pouring forth everywhere their improvident and unsifted store, the best is too liable to be lost within the swift current of a vast and turbid abundance. It is, therefore, worth while for us—for those of us who have an abiding love of literature—to endeavor to rescue and place in more permanent form the choicest bits of this modern efflux of writing, and make it easily available for a more leisurely and intelligent perusal.