53. The Bird of Serbia, by Julian Street (Collier’s Weekly). Repeatedly in the course of this article I have had occasion to point out that the best of the year’s war stories are creating new legends. How a bird in a cage in a little Serbian village may have been the cause of the Great War is persuasively set forth by Mr. Street in this story. The conclusion is one of the best examples of a justifiable surprise ending that I know of, and the human quality of Mr. Street’s characterization renders its inherent improbability psychologically convincing.

54. The Three Zoölogical Wishes, by Booth Tarkington (Collier’s Weekly). This is the most amusing study of adolescence that Mr. Tarkington has given us. It has countless subtle touches of observation which quietly build up two remarkably accurate portraits. I regard it as the best of the new series which Mr. Tarkington has been publishing in Collier’s Weekly.

55. Five Rungs Gone, by Albert W. Tolman (Youth’s Companion). For many years the most interesting weekly feature of the Youth’s Companion has been the danger story in which the youthful hero escapes from extraordinary peril by virtue of courage and great intellectual ingenuity. Most of these stories are built on a regular formula and cannot claim much literary value. But now and then a situation is so vividly realized, and the situation so logically deduced, that the story has literary justification. And “Five Rungs Gone” is altogether exceptional in this respect.

56. At Isham’s, by Edward C. Venable (Scribner’s Magazine). The zest of this story consists in the intellectual subtlety of mental conflict. It contrasts the characters of several habitués of a New York café who form a little group each night for endless discussion. The value of the story rests in the manner in which events bring out variations in character, and the solution of the story is as absorbing as a chess problem.

57. De Vilmarte’s Luck (Harper’s Magazine) and 58. Huntington’s Credit (Harper’s Magazine), by Mary Heaton Vorse. In these two stories there is a marked contrast of subject matter. “De Vilmarte’s Luck” is a study of the artistic temperament, with fine ironies keenly portrayed. The war provides the story with a solution which reveals the finer grain. In “Huntington’s Credit” we have a study in suppressed desires, very quietly told, with a poignancy softened somehow by the quality of character. In these two stories Mary Heaton Vorse has given us the best work written by her in the last four years.

59. The White Battalion, by Frances Gilchrist Wood (The Bookman). Here is the last of the fine supernatural legends inspired during the past year by the Great War. The White Battalion of the dead which fights on the side of the Allies is comparable to the marching host seen by Harrison Rhodes in “Extra Men,” but there is an élan in this story which suggests a deeper spiritual background.

60. In the House of Morphy, by John Seymour Wood (Scribner’s Magazine). This legend of old New Orleans has the romantic glow of Mr. Cable’s best novels linked to a well-developed plot with a fine quality of logical surprise. It is one of the best stories written by a fastidious artist of the old school who appears seldom in our magazines, and always with the finest substance that he can give.

[ARTICLES ON THE SHORT STORY, JANUARY TO OCTOBER, 1918]

The following abbreviations are used in this index:—

Atl. .....................Atlantic Monthly

Bel. .....................Bellman

B. E. T. ................Boston Evening Transcript

Bk. News Mo. ........Book News Monthly

Book. ...............Bookman

Cen. ................Century Magazine

C. O. ...............Current Opinion

Cos. ................Cosmopolitan

F. A. Suppl. ........Fine Arts Supplement

For. ................Forum

Lit. R. .............Little Review

Liv. Age ............Living Age

Mir. ................Reedy’s Mirror

N. A. Rev. ..........North American Review

N. Rep. .............New Republic

Outl. (London) ......London Outlook

So. Atl. Quart. .....South Atlantic Quarterly

Strat. J. ...........Stratford Journal

Yale R. .............Yale Review

(161) ...............Page 161

(11:161) ............Volume 11, page 161