Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories and other material in this volume is made to the following authors, editors, publishers, and copyright holders:
To The Pictorial Review Company and Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock for permission to reprint "The Excursion," first published in The Pictorial Review; to The Century Company and Mr. Thomas Beer for permission to reprint "Onnie," first published in The Century Magazine; to Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Maxwell Struthers Burt for permission to reprint "A Cup of Tea," first published in Scribner's Magazine; to The Pictorial Review Company and Mr. Francis Buzzell for permission to reprint "Lonely Places," first published in The Pictorial Review; to The Curtis Publishing Company and Mr. Irvin S. Cobb for permission to reprint "Boys Will Be Boys," first published in The Saturday Evening Post; to Harper and Brothers and Mr. Charles Caldwell Dobie for permission to reprint "Laughter," first published in Harper's Magazine; to The Century Company and Mr. H. G. Dwight for permission to reprint "The Emperor of Elam," first published in The Century Magazine; to The Metropolitan Magazine Company and Miss Edna Ferber for permission to reprint "The Gay Old Dog," first published in The Metropolitan Magazine; to The Atlantic Monthly Company and Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould for permission to reprint "The Knight's Move," first published in The Atlantic Monthly; to The Crowell Publishing Company, the editor of Every Week, and Mrs. George Cram Cook for permission to reprint "A Jury of Her Peers," by Susan Glaspell, first published in Every Week and The Associated Sunday Magazines; to The Century Company and Captain Frederick Stuart Greene for permission to reprint "The Bunker Mouse," first published in The Century Magazine; to Mr. Paul R. Reynolds for confirmation of Captain Greene's permission; to The Pictorial Review Company and Mr. Richard Matthews Hallet for permission to reprint "Rainbow Pete," first published in The Pictorial Review; to The International Magazine Company, the editor of The Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Miss Fannie Hurst for permission to reprint "Get Ready the Wreaths," first published in The Cosmopolitan Magazine; to the editor of The Pagan and Mrs. Vincent Costello for permission to reprint "The Strange-Looking Man," by Fanny Kemble Johnson, first published in The Pagan; to The Stratford Journal, the editor of The Stratford Journal, and Mr. Burton Kline for permission to reprint "The Caller in the Night," first published in The Stratford Journal; to The Boston Transcript Company and Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan for permission to reprint "The Interval," first published in The Boston Evening Transcript; to Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Lawrence Perry for permission to reprint "'A Certain Rich Man—,'" first published in Scribner's Magazine; to The Curtis Publishing Company and Mrs. Mary Brecht Pulver for permission to reprint "The Path of Glory," first published in The Saturday Evening Post; to The Pictorial Review Company and Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele for permission to reprint "Ching, Ching, Chinaman," first published in The Pictorial Review; and to Harper and Brothers and Miss Mary Synon for permission to reprint "None So Blind," first published in Harper's Magazine.
Acknowledgments are specially due to The Boston Evening Transcript and The Bookman for permission to reprint the large body of material previously published in their pages.
I wish specially to express my gratitude to the following who have materially assisted by their efforts and advice in making this year-book of American fiction possible and more nearly complete:
Mrs. Padraic Colum, Mr. A. A. Boyden, Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, Mr. Henry A. Bellows, Mr. Herman E. Cassino, Mr. G. G. Wyant, Mr. Burton Kline, Mr. Douglas Z. Doty, Mr. Barry Benefield, Mr. T. R. Smith, Mr. Frederick Lewis Allen, Mr. Henry J. Forman, Miss Honoré Willsie, Mr. Harold Hersey, Mr. Bruce Barton, Miss Bernice Brown, Miss Mariel Brady, Mr. William Frederick Bigelow, Mr. John Chapman Hilder, Mr. Thomas B. Wells, Mr. Lee Foster Hartman, Mr. Sewell Haggard, Mr. Samuel W. Hippler, Mr. Joseph Bernard Rethy, Mr. Karl Edwin Harriman, Mr. Christopher Morley, Miss Margaret Anderson, Mrs. Hughes Cornell, Miss Myra G. Reed, Mr. Merrill Rogers, Mr. Charles Hanson Towne, Mr. Carl Hovey, Miss Sonya Levien, Mr. John T. Frederick, Mr. Ival McPeak, Mr. Robert H. Davis, Mrs. R. M. Hallowell, Mr. Harold T. Pulsifer, Mr. Wyndham Martyn, Mr. Frank Harris, Mr. Robert W. Sneddon, Miss Rose L. Ellerbe, Mr. Arthur T. Vance, Miss Jane Lee, Mr. Joseph Kling, Mr. William Marion Reedy, Mr. Leo Pasvolsky, Mr. Churchill Williams, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. Waldo Frank, Mr. H. E. Maule, Mr. Henry L. Mencken, Mr. Robert Thomas Hardy, Miss Anne Rankin, Mr. Henry T. Schnittkind, Dr. Isaac Goldberg, Mr. Charles K. Field, Mrs. Mary Fanton Roberts, Miss Sarah Field Splint, Miss Mabel Barker, Mr. Hayden Carruth, Mrs. Kathleen Norris, Mrs. Ethel Hoe, Miss Mildred Cram, Miss Dorothea Lawrance Mann, Miss Hilda Baker, Mr. William Stanley Braithwaite, Mr. Frank Owen, Mr. Alexander Harvey, Mr. Seumas O'Brien, Madame Gaston Lachaise, Mr. John J. Phillips, Mr. Sylvester Baxter, Miss Alice Brown, Mr. Francis Buzzell, Mr. Will Levington Comfort, Mr. Robert A. Parker, Mr. Randolph Edgar, Miss Augusta B. Fowler, Captain Frederick Stuart Greene, Mr. Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, Mr. Reginald Wright Kauffman, Mr. J. B. Kerfoot, Mrs. Elsie S. Lewars, Miss Jeannette Marks, Mr. W. M. Clayton, Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan, Mr. Henry Wallace Phillips, Mr. Melville Davisson Post, Mr. John D. Sabine, Mr. Richard Barker Shelton, Mrs. A. M. Scruggs, Miss May Selley, Mr. Daniel J. Shea, Mr. Vincent Starrett, Mr. M. M. Stearns, Mrs. Ann Watkins, Dr. Blanche Colton Williams, Mr. Edward P. Nagel, Mr. G. Humphrey, Rev. J.-F. Raiche, Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele, Miss Louise Rand Bascom, Mr. Octavus Roy Cohen, Mr. Robert Cumberland, Mr. Charles Divine, Mr. Frank C. Dodd, Mr. William R. Kane, Mr. David Gibson, Miss Ida Warren Gould, Miss Ella E. Hirsch, Miss Marie Louise Kinsella, Mr. Frank E. Lohn, Mrs. Margaret Medbury, Miss Anna Mitchell, Mr. Robert W. Neal, Mr. Edwin Carty Ranck, Miss Anne B. Schultze, Mrs. Celia Baldwin Whitehead, Mr. Horatio Winslow, Miss Kate Buss, Mrs. E. B. Dewing, Mr. A. E. Dingle, Mr. Edmund R. Brown, Mr. George Gilbert, Mr. Harry E. Jergens, Mr. Eric Levison, Mr. Robert McBlair, Mrs. Vivien C. Mackenzie, Mr. W. W. Norman, Rev. Wilbur Fletcher Steele, Mrs. Elizabeth C. A. Smith, Captain Achmed Abdullah, Mr. H. H. Howland, Mr. Howard W. Cook, Mr. Newton A. Fuessle, Mr. B. Guilbert Guerney, Mr. William H. Briggs, Mr. Francis Garrison, Mr. Albert J. Klinck, Mr. Alfred A. Knopf, Miss Mary Lerner, Mr. H. F. Jenkins, Mr. Guy Holt, Mr. H. S. Latham, Mr. H. L. Pangborn, Miss Maisie Prim, Mr. S. Edgar Briggs, Mr. William Morrow, Mr. Sherwood Anderson, Hon. W. Andrews, Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock, Mr. Thomas Beer, Mrs. Fleta Campbell Springer, Miss Sarah N. Cleghorn, Mr. Irvin S. Cobb, Miss Alice Cowdery, Miss Bertha Helen Crabbe, Mr. H. G. Dwight, Miss Edna Ferber, Mrs. Elizabeth Irons Folsom, Miss Ellen Glasgow, Mrs. George Cram Cook, Mr. Armistead C. Gordon, Miss Fannie Hurst, Mrs. Vincent Costello, Mrs. E. Clement Jones, Mrs. Gerald Stanley Lee, Mr. Addison Lewis, Mr. Edison Marshall, Mr. Edgar Lee Masters, Miss Gertrude Nafe, Mr. Meredith Nicholson, Mr. Harvey J. O'Higgins, Mr. Lawrence Perry, Mrs. Olive Higgins Prouty, Mrs. Mary Brecht Pulver, Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt, Mr. Herman Schneider, Professor Grant Showerman, Miss Mary Synon, Mrs. Mary Heaton O'Brien, Mr. George Weston, and especially to Mr. Francis J. Hannigan, to whom I owe invaluable cooperation in ways too numerous to mention.
I shall be grateful to my readers for corrections, and particularly for suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume. In particular, I shall welcome the receipt, from authors, editors, and publishers, of stories published during 1918 which have qualities of distinction, and yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice. It is also my intention during 1918 to review all volumes of short stories published during that year in the United States. All communications and volumes submitted for review in "The Best Short Stories of 1918" maybe addressed to me at South Yarmouth, Massachusetts. For such assistance, I shall make due and grateful acknowledgment in next year's annual.
If I have been guilty of any omissions in these acknowledgments, it is quite unintentional, and I trust that I shall be absolved for my good intentions.
INTRODUCTION
A year ago, in the introduction to "The Best Short Stories of 1916," I pointed out that the American short story cannot be reduced to a literary formula, because the art in which it finds its concrete embodiment is a growing art. The critic, when he approaches American literature, cannot regard it as he can regard any foreign literature. Setting aside the question of whether our cosmopolitan population, with its widely different kinds of racial heritage, is at an advantage or