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SHORT STORIES

OLD AND NEW



SELECTED AND EDITED

BY

C. ALPHONSO SMITH

EDGAR ALLAN POE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, AUTHOR OF
"THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY," ETC.



1916






INTRODUCTION

Every short story has three parts, which may be called Setting or
Background, Plot or Plan, and Characters or Character. If you are going
to write a short story, as I hope you are, you will find it necessary to
think through these three parts so as to relate them interestingly and
naturally one to the other; and if you want to assimilate the best that
is in the following stories, you will do well to approach them by the
same three routes.

The Setting or Background gives us the time and the place of the story
with such details of custom, scenery, and dialect as time and place
imply. It answers the questions _When? Where?_ The Plot tells us what
happened. It gives us the incidents and events, the haps or mishaps,
that are interwoven to make up the warp and woof of the story. Sometimes
there is hardly any interweaving; just a plain plan or simple outline is
followed, as in "The Christmas Carol" or "The Great Stone Face." We may
still call the core of these two stories the Plot, if we want to, but
Plan would be the more accurate. This part of the story answers the
question _What_? Under the heading Characters or Character we study the
personalities of the men and women who move through the story and give
it unity and coherence. Sometimes, as in "The Christmas Carol" or
"Markheim," one character so dominates the others that they are mere
spokes in his hub or incidents in his career. But in "The Gift of the
Magi," though more space is given to Della, she and Jim act from the
same motive and contribute equally to the development of the story. In
one of our stories the main character is a dog, but he is so human that
we may still say that the chief question to be answered under this
heading is _Who?_

Many books have been written about these three parts of a short story,
but the great lesson to be learned is that the excellence of a story,
long or short, consists not in the separate excellence of the Setting or
of the Plot or of the Characters but in the perfect blending of the
three to produce a single effect or to impress a single truth. If the
Setting does not fit the Plot, if the Plot does not rise gracefully from
the Setting, if the Characters do not move naturally and
self-revealingly through both, the story is a failure. Emerson might
well have had our three parts of the short story in mind when he wrote,

   All are needed by each one;
   Nothing is fair or good alone.





CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

I. ESTHER, From the Old Testament

II. THE HISTORY OF ALI BABA AND THE FORTY ROBBERS, From "The
   Arabian Nights"

III. RIP VAN WINKLE, By Washington Irving

IV. THE GOLD-BUG, By Edgar Allan Poe

V. A CHRISTMAS CAROL, By Charles Dickens

VI. THE GREAT STONE FACE, By Nathaniel Hawthorne

VII. RAB AND HIS FRIENDS, By Dr. John Brown

VIII. THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, By Bret Harte

IX. MARKHEIM, By Robert Louis Stevenson

X. THE NECKLACE, By Guy de Maupassant

XI. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, By Rudyard Kipling

XII. THE GIFT OF THE MAGI, By O. Henry




SHORT STORIES




I. ESTHER[*]

[* From the Old Testament, Authorized Version.]

AUTHOR UNKNOWN


[_Setting_. The events take place in Susa, the capital of Persia, in the
reign of Ahasuerus, or Xerxes (485-465 B.C.). This foreign locale
intensifies the splendid Jewish patriotism that breathes through the
story from beginning to end. If the setting had been in Jerusalem,
Esther could not have preached the noble doctrine, "When in Rome, don't
do as Rome does, but be true to the old ideals of home and race."

_Plot_. "Esther" seems to me the best-told story in the Bible. Observe
how the note of empty Persian bigness versus simple Jewish faith is
struck at the very beginning and is echoed to the end. Thus, Ahasuerus
ruled over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, the opening banquet
lasted one hundred and eighty-seven days, the king's bulletins were as
unalterable as the tides, the gallows erected was eighty-three feet
high, the beds were of gold and silver upon a pavement of red and blue
and white and black marble, the money wrested from the Jews was to be
eighteen million dollars, etc. The word "banquet" occurs twenty times in
this short story and only twenty times in all the remaining thirty-eight
books of the Old Testament. In other words, Ahasuerus and his
trencher-mates ate and drank as much in five days as had been eaten and
drunk by all the other Old Testament characters from "Genesis" to
"Malachi."

Note also the contrast between the two queens, the two prime ministers,
the two edicts, and the two later banquets. The most masterly part of
the plot is the handling of events between these banquets. Read again
from chapter v, beginning at verse 9, through chapter vi, and note how
skillfully the pen is held. In motivation as well as in symmetry and
naturalness the story is without a peer. There is humor, too, in the
solemn deliberations over Vashti's "No" (chapter i, verses 12-22) and in
the strange procession led by pedestrian Haman (chapter vi, verses
6-11).

The purpose of the story was to encourage the feast of Purim (chapter
ix, verses 20-32) and to promote national solidarity. It may be compared
to "A Christmas Carol," which was written to restore the waning
celebration of Christmas, and to our Declaration of Independence, which
is re-read on every Fourth of July to quicken our sense of national
fellowship. But "Esther" is more than an institution. It is the old
story of two conflicting civilizations, one representing bigness, the
other greatness; one standing for materialism, the other for idealism;
one enthroning the body, the other the spirit.

_Characters_. These are finely individualized, though each seems to me a
type. Ahasuerus is a tank that runs blood or wine according to the hand
that turns the spigot. He was used for good but deserves and receives no
credit for it. No man ever missed a greater opportunity. He was brought
face to face with the two greatest world-civilizations of history; but,
understanding neither, he remains only a muddy place in the road along
which Greek and Hebrew passed to world-conquest. Haman,