8. The Black Pearl, by Katharine Butler (Atlantic Monthly). This story, redolent of the East, is an admirable study in atmosphere. It has all the nostalgia of a half-forgotten dream, and yet it is so confidently set forth that we may enter its background without difficulty. Style is not a common quality, I regret to say, in American short stories, but the picture portrayed in “The Black Pearl” is well nigh flawless.
9. Some Ladies and Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell (Smart Set), is a wilful apologue of poets and their wives which will delight the thoughtful while disappointing the serious. It is really a prose poem without any moral whatever, unless perhaps the moral Miss Guiney once pointed out when she said that tall talk always reminded her of the Himalayas. I commend the fable to all would-be poets.
10. The Gallowsmith, by Irvin S. Cobb (All-Story Weekly). This story, which marks a great departure from Mr. Cobb’s usual vein, is one of the most grim stories an American magazine has ever published, but it is a masterly portrait of a professional hangman which the reader cannot easily forget. With vivid completeness of detail, and characterization which is admirably suggestive, Mr. Cobb manages the situation in such a way that its conclusion is inevitable, yet unexpected.
11. The Open Window, by Charles Caldwell Dobie (Harper’s Magazine), is a sequel to “Laughter,” which I published last year as one of the best short stories of 1917. Unlike most sequels, it is perhaps better than its predecessor, and the mastery of his art which Mr. Dobie shows only serves to confirm my prediction of two years ago, that in Mr. Dobie America would find before long one of its four or five best short-story writers. An adventurous publisher, anxious to issue the best that is being written in American fiction, cannot afford to neglect Mr. Dobie.
12. The Emerald of Tamerlane, by H. G. Dwight and John Taylor (Century Magazine). Every discriminating reader knows H. G. Dwight’s book of short stories entitled “Stamboul Nights,” and admires its quality of romantic mystery and poetic description. “The Emerald of Tamerlane” admirably sustains Mr. Dwight’s reputation for vivid realization of Persian life.
13. Blind Vision, by Mary Mitchell Freedley (Century Magazine). This story, by S. Weir Mitchell’s granddaughter, marks not only Mrs. Freedley’s first appearance in print, but the arrival of a remarkable new talent. It is a study of an American aviator and a spiritual problem that he had to decide, and is set down with exceptional artistic economy.
14. The Irish of It, by Cornelia Throop Geer (Atlantic Monthly). This little study, which is hardly more than a dialogue, is inimitable in its deft humorous characterization. It is good news to be able to report that Miss Geer is planning a volume of stories about these Irish boys and girls whose poetry of thought and action is so coaxing.
15. Imagination, by Gordon Hall Gerould (Scribner’s Magazine). Captain Gerould has taken his subject quietly and handled it with a thoughtful sense of its possibilities. This study of a successful writer of best sellers, with his egregious solemnity and lack of imagination, is delightfully rendered. The subtlety of the author’s psychology will not blind the reader to its essential truth.
16. Marchpane, by Katharine Fullerton Gerould (Harper’s Magazine). Mrs. Gerould has only published one short story this year, but fortunately it ranks among her best. It is written with all her usual close observation of abnormal psychological situations. The art of few stories is concealed so successfully, and the story is one of which Henry James would have been proud.
17. In Maulmain Fever-Ward, by George Gilbert. This story, which appeared in a Chicago magazine, is the first of an unusual series of stories dealing with East Indian life. It is full of a wild poetry of speech and action, set against a background of almost oppressive natural beauty. I think that the story would have gained by a little more reticence, but the groundwork is firm and the detail admirably rendered.