3. Tell your story in a way that will be different from the way employed by any of your classmates.
In general, the stories in this book are to be read and enjoyed, worked over, and talked about, in a simple manner, as one might discuss stories at a reading club. To treat the stories in any other way would be to make displeasing work out of what should be pure pleasure.
In the back of the book is a small amount of biographical and explanatory material, such as a friendly teacher might tell to his class. There are also a few questions that will help you to appreciate and enjoy the best effects in every story. The notes have been given merely for reference, as if they were contained in a sort of handy encyclopedia. They are not for hard, systematic study.
A class studying this book should forget that it is a class in school, and resolve itself into a reading club, whose object,—written in its constitution, in capital letters,—is pure enjoyment of all that is best in short stories, and in short story telling.
VI
WHERE TO FIND SOME GOOD SHORT STORIES
| Baldwin, Charles Sears | American Short Stories |
| Cody, Sherwin | The World’s Best Short Stories |
| Dawson, W. J. and C. W. | Great English Short Story Writers |
| Esenwein, Joseph Berg | Short Story Masterpieces |
| Firkins, I. T. E. | Index to Short Stories |
| Hawthorne, Julian | Library of the World’s Best Mystery and Detective Stories |
| Jessup, Alexander | Little French Masterpieces |
| Jessup, A. and Canby, H. S. | The Book of the Short Story |
| Matthews, Brander | The Short Story |
| Patten, William | Great Short Stories |
| Patten, William | Short Story Classics |
| Charles Scribner’s Sons | Stories by American Authors |
| Charles Scribner’s Sons | Stories by English Authors |
| Charles Scribner’s Sons | Stories by Foreign Authors |
VII
SOME INTERESTING SHORT STORIES
R. H. Davis: The Bar Sinister; Washington Irving: The Rose of the Alhambra; The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Rip Van Winkle; The Three Beautiful Princesses; Rudyard Kipling: Garm, A Hostage; The Arabian Nights: Aladdin; Ali Baba; Annie Trumbull Slosson: Butterneggs; Ruth McEnery Stuart: Sonny’s Diploma; Frederick Remington: How Order No. 6 Went Through; Mark Twain: The Jumping Frog; Henry Van Dyke: The First Christmas Tree.
H. C. Andersen: The Ugly Duckling; Grimm Brothers: Little Briar Rose; Rudyard Kipling: Mowgli’s Brothers; Toomai of the Elephants; Her Majesty’s Servants; Æsop: The Country Mouse and the City Mouse; Joel Chandler Harris: The Wonderful Tar Baby Story; How Black Snake Caught the Wolf; Brother Mud Turtle’s Trickery; A French Tar Baby; George Ade: The Preacher Who Flew His Kite.
Henry Van Dyke: The Other Wise Man; Nathaniel Hawthorne: Rapaccini’s Daughter; David Swan; The Snow Image; The Great Stone Face; Lady Eleanor’s Mantle; The Minister’s Black Veil; The Birth Mark; E. A. Poe: William Wilson; Rudyard Kipling: The Ship that Found Herself; Henry James: The Madonna of the Future; R. L. Stevenson: Will o’ the Mill; Joseph Addison: The Vision of Mirza.