Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

SHORT STORIES FOR ENGLISH COURSES

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY ROSA M. R. MIKELS

SHORTRIDGE HIGH SCHOOL, INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

CONTENTS

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.

PREFACE

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.