Part 1
# O. Henry Memorial Award prize stories of 1927 ### By Unknown
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_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES of 1927_
_O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD_
PRIZE STORIES _of_ 1927
CHOSEN BY THE SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS
_Author of “A Handbook on Story Writing,” “Our Short Story Writers,” Etc._
_Head, Department of English, Hunter College of the City of New York_
[Illustration]
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. 1928
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY THE PICTORIAL REVIEW COMPANY. COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY THE AMERICAN MERCURY, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY. COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY BILL ADAMS. COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY. COPYRIGHT, 1926, 1927, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY. COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY HARPER & BROTHERS. COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY THE CENTURY COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
For the Committee the chairman thanks authors, editors, and agents, with whose friendly coöperation this volume is prepared.
BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS.
New York City, January, 1927.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. By Blanche Colton Williams ix
CHILD OF GOD. By Roark Bradford 1
THE KILLERS. By Ernest Hemingway 15
THE SCARLET WOMAN. By Louis Bromfield 25
JUKES. By Bill Adams 34
FEAR. By James Warner Bellah 53
NIGHT CLUB. By Katharine Brush 84
SINGING WOMAN. By Ada Jack Carver 97
WITH GLORY AND HONOUR. By Elisabeth Cobb Chapman 109
BULLDOG. By Roger Daniels 126
HE MAN. By Marjory Stoneman Douglas 149
“DONE GOT OVER.” By Alma and Paul Ellerbe 175
MONKEY MOTIONS. By Eleanor Mercein Kelly 192
FOUR DREAMS OF GRAM PERKINS. By Ruth Sawyer 208
THE LITTLE GIRL FROM TOWN. By Ruth Suckow 220
SHADES OF GEORGE SAND! By Ellen du Pois Taylor 239
INTRODUCTION
THE JUDGES
1. EMMA K. TEMPLE } 2. ISABEL WALKER } 3. HARRY ANABLE KNIFFIN } _First_ 4. KATHARINE LACY } _Judges_ { 5. FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD } _Final_ { 6. DOROTHY SCARBOROUGH } _Judges_ { 7. BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS } _Chairman_ { 8. ROBERT L. RAMSAY { 9. MAXIM LIEBER
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 _Readers_, _First Judges_ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 _Final Judges_.
In preparing this the ninth volume of the series, the O. Henry Memorial Committee selected more than six hundred stories from some twenty-five hundred published in the year October, 1926, to September, 1927, inclusive. Of these six hundred the best according to the votes of at least two judges are listed in the following pages. From the fifty stories ranking highest were chosen, in the usual process of elimination by five final judges, the fifteen included in this volume.
“Child of God,” by Roark Bradford, received four votes for first place, and wins by a number of points. To this story, published in _Harper’s Magazine_, April, 1927, is awarded the first prize of $500.
Four candidates were considered for second place. One judge preferred “Singing Woman”; another, “Shades of George Sand” (closely followed by “The Little Girl from Town”); another, “Fear”; two others cast votes for “The Killers.” To this last named story, which wins by points, is awarded the second prize of $250. “The Killers,” by Ernest Hemingway, was published in _Scribner’s Magazine_, March, 1927.
For the special prize awarded the best short short story, the following were nominated by one or more of the judges: “Another Wife,” by Sherwood Anderson; “Sandoe’s Pocket,” by Elsie Singmaster; “Tommy Taylor,” by Zona Gale; “The Scarlet Woman,” by Louis Bromfield. “The Scarlet Woman” leads and receives therefore the award of $100. The story was published in _McClure’s_, January, 1927.
* * * * *
Among the fifteen stories ranking highest, four happen to be about the American Negro. The increasing representation of this race in brief fiction I observed in my introduction to _O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories_ of 1925. Of that year Du Bose Heyward’s “Crown’s Bess” and Julia Peterkin’s “Maum Lou” were reprinted; John Matheus’s “Fog,” Frederick Tisdale’s “The Guitar,” and Elsie Singmaster’s “Elfie” were mentioned. The volume for 1926 reprinted Arthur Huff Fauset’s “Symphonesque” and Lyle Saxon’s “Cane River.” The present collection offers, first, “Child of God.” “Never,” writes Mrs. Wood, “was the spirit of an age and a people more happily caught than here. The old-time darky and his tales may have been lost in a modern deluge of the nigger minstrel type, that ‘extinct species of a race that never existed’; but he comes back into his own in ‘Child of God’ with his characteristic ideas of a perfect heaven.” That the idea of heaven advanced is Willie’s idea appears to have eluded those who raised a small storm when they read the story in _Harper’s_. The visions Mr. Bradford spreads upon the page with sympathy and naïve simplicity are, of course, the visions vouchsafed to Willie in the few seconds after the trap gave way under his feet and before his body was borne out of jail; just so Willie would have constructed those visions. Added to the dream is something else that is greater art. The supernatural, revealing Willie’s experiences after death, is joined to the human dream so well as to defy detection. Who knows when life was pronounced extinct? What part of Willie’s dream belongs to earth and what to the heaven of his fancy? “There is art, exquisite art, in the joining,” as O. Henry once wrote of another story, and tenuous though the fabric may be, the seam is indiscernible. And how completely the delicately woven stuff covers the hard reality of the green-eyed man’s collapse! That ugly blue face and frothy saliva potently declare that the hangman was neatly punished by Willie’s ghost. “Mr. Bradford is of course the unquestionable find of the year,” writes Mr. Ramsay. “His ‘Child of God’ would perhaps never have been written if Molnar had not shown us in _Liliom_ how interesting it may be to see heaven through a glass very darkly; but it is an amazingly successful transcription into terms of Negro psychology.” The chairman suggests that it be read side by side with Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”--a tale many times reprinted--for testing its indubitable superiority.
“Bulldog,” like the prize winner, makes of an alleged criminal a hero. The black giant, of square and protruding jaw, square and receding forehead, was a fighter, one intent upon vengeance, willing to take punishment. The brute strength that served him falsely in his personal fracases served him and the judge truly in the fifteen-mile odyssey to Ossabaw. Mr. Daniels’s use of revealing incident and character prepares acceptance for Bulldog’s herculean feat, climax to an escape at once logical and stirring. Call to mind all the thrills you have enjoyed--say, from the many chases in _Les Misérables_ on--and compare with them the action from “Stan’s yo’ back!” to the “cry through the stillness of the night”; you will find that it survives in form, in style, in substance. With right logic and humorous turn the author brings Bulldog back to the opening scene and to the sentence of six months on the farm.
“Done Got Over” dramatizes the struggle between superstition harnessed with petty vengeance against enlightenment aided by generosity. Whoever has lived in the cotton belt knows with what excitation of horror, with what sense of the occult and foreboding of the mysteriously awful the old-time Negroes await the funeral sermon over the manifest ungodly. Intimation of a “preaching-to-hell” draws--or not many years ago drew--an audience keyed to highest expectancy, all sympathy lost in shuddering anticipation of the sinner’s doom. The idea seldom occurs that the verdict of the preacher is not irremediable. Perhaps “Done Got Over” falters at the moment of climax, perhaps one may wish that Miss Jinny Pickens had spoken. Her simple act, however, was sufficient--one who knows the Pickenses testifies to this point. The local colour witnesses the authors’ careful observation; the atmosphere declares their participation in the drama. They must have seen Draper’s yard of prince’s feather and dog-fennel; must have smelled the fig leaves in Miss Jinny’s back yard, the cape jasmines on Tampa’s coffin; surely they felt the agony of Tampa’s son.
“Monkey Motions,” from a seemingly casual recountal of Sam’l, rises to the perfect description of his dancing. That climax becomes a flashlight to illumine the backward way, to outline clearly details unguessed as salient. Pictures of the dance have always tempted the pen, not infrequently to failure; this instance is successful. “What are you weeping about?” asked Tom. If you have followed with the dancer his exposition of the “origins, methods, and significations” of the Charleston, if through it you have followed his race’s history, you may still have no more reason than Aunt Lady, but you will be dropping a tear with her. And your reason may be that so poignant a summary of race history in so short space presents the motive.
“The Killers,” second prize winner, one of three photographically realistic studies here reprinted, has been the most talked about story of 1927. In its seeming incompleteness is its superb completeness. Max and Al, the killers, do not get their man this particular evening, but they will get him; and the doom that Ole Andreson knows to be upon him when he says, “There isn’t anything I can do about it,” is more appalling than would be the actual shot from that sawed-off gun. Unknown horrors are greater than known horrors, a truth of which Mr. Hemingway has taken advantage in leaving the reader to construct the climax. If Ole stays in the room, the slayers will find him; if he goes out, they will find him; in either choice, they will inevitably shoot him. Can such things be? carries its answer: Such things are. Without a word of preachment, the story arraigns a world of presumable law and order. Mr. Hemingway’s dialogue, lacking specious suspense or excitement, tells the story. Six or seven hundred words in addition relate the bare action and sketch the setting. In transferring this narrative to the dramatic form no changes are necessary except the conversion of non-dialogue into stage directions; the story is economically perfect. It is not really a story, says Mrs. Wood, “not to be insulted as half-caste ‘realism’--just a blazing bit of reality to which you are the unwilling witness. Like the black cook, you ‘don’t like any of it--don’t like any of it, at all!’ yet you could no more tear yourself away from that peep-hole in the kitchen than you could resist the weaving head of a cobra. Of course, it is stale comparison to liken ‘The Killers’ to Greek tragedy, but since that is our golden milestone no other comparison serves.”
Of all the stories here reprinted, Maxim Lieber thinks “Night Club” “by far the best. It is a very swiftly moving, sharply outlined story, and the author achieves a remarkable effect with the utmost economy of words.” In “Night Club” Miss Brush purports to retail the drab evening of Mrs. Brady, maid, and in so doing adds another instance to examples of old truths: Romance is never at hand, but far away; the searcher fails to see that what he seeks is near home; life is stranger than fiction. The parts of the story are greater than its whole, a six-in-one marvel that tells the stories of (1) a wife who denies her marriage tie, for reasons implied, (2) of a dope fiend, (3) of an unfaithful husband, the wife, and the other woman, (4) of a girl who finds a pair of scissors necessary with her escort, (5) of an elopement, (6) of a girl who marries wealth to save her sister’s life. Even summary details convey other stories: “she saw a yellow check with the ink hardly dry.” Like “The Killers,” this story is of the immediate present. Nothing in fiction has described night-club life so deftly, much less described it from the cubbyhole of a maid who saw nothing.
Third of these photographic studies is “The Little Girl from Town,” an exquisite picture of childhood embroidered in tiny, colourful stitches. It reminds the chairman of nothing so much as a treasured piece of tapestry, bought years ago in Bath, in which thousands of stitches portray a small girl, her dog, her parrot, and her flowers. Patricia’s beauty and helplessness, set off by the hardier country children’s assurance, emphasized by her seeming victory, her pitiful failure, in saving the calf--this slight theme the author has embellished with a wealth of detail. As in the grimmer realism of “The Killers,” dialogue does most of the work. The minute accuracy of its transcription reads like a stenographic report edited by an artist. In this story, “quiet and penetrating,” to quote Mr. Ramsay, and in “Eminence” (see page xxii), whose chief character is a relative of Patricia’s, Miss Suckow has surpassed her former writing. Interesting by way of comparison for similarity of theme is Nels Anderson’s “Old Whitey” (see page xxxi).
Elisabeth Cobb Chapman’s “With Glory and Honour,” which shares with “Night Club” the element of setting, uses the setting for a different purpose. Hal Levering, who has denied his race, learns by a humiliating lesson what every man of every race must learn, that individual fulfilment depends upon race, pride in race, acceptance of racial possibilities. The work of Irvin Cobb’s daughter, “With Glory and Honour,” itself a happy testimonial to inheritance, reveals individual power that promises well. In suggestion, choice of detail, and rhythm, the story might be the accomplishment of a master.
In “He Man,” Marjory Stoneman Douglas not only tells the experiences of six in a fallen plane ending in the death of all but two, not only describes a struggle with the sea that lasted two days and nights; she achieves victory for endurance and fortitude, no less tokens of manhood than sportsmanship and courage. By vivid pictures, by the wind in the wires, by the omnipresence of the menacing sea, the author brings near the plight of those on the craft. Beautiful writing, forceful writing, carries the story; for example, “Stars were quivering in the enormous rondure of the sky that overhead took on a strange metallic blue and cast upon them a faint luminance that was less than light and only a little less than dark.” Isn’t that worthy to set beside “L’obscure clarté, qui tombe des etoiles,” and Milton’s light that served to render darkness visible?
The title “Fear,” the fear of men who fly, declares companionship with “He Man.” “Fear,” second on Dr. Scarborough’s list, has the distinction of being the one war story chosen from scores that have done their bit to memorialize the tenth decade after America’s entry into the conflict. “Fear” may be, as Mr. Ramsay says, sloppily executed; but, as he also states, it is intensely realized. Mr. Bellah’s way with planes is the way of one who has fought in them; his analysis of Paterson’s fear is the analysis of a warrior who knows the effect of war on men’s minds. Paterson weakened twice, but he recouped in the climax of his berserker rage what he had lost through previous faltering. To read “Fear” is to live again the days of ’17 and ’18. The story establishes the same point “He Man” establishes: faced by demand for courage, fear flees.
“Jukes,” the story of a sailor by sailor Bill Adams, is the survival of many cullings from _Adventure_. No other magazine represented in this book has shown so remarkable a gain in quality. The chairman, who read every number, marvelled at its rapid rise and trusts the ascent is more than temporary. Mr. Ramsay also comments that _Adventure_ has had an unusually good year. Mr. Adams, who spent eight weeks in writing “Jukes”, surely had no prime intention of producing an argument for prohibition; he was concerned to show the weakness of Jukes, that weakness by which tottered Jukes’s good resolutions, weakness abetted by crimp and board master. “You an’ me is dogs,” says one of the sailors; and “Jukes, was you ever beat at anything?” draws no answer. Jukes knows that he has never been other than beaten; his repeated impressment will be repeated--until the end. To read “Jukes” is to taste the ocean’s bitterest salt. Mr. Adams need not tell us that he has sailed with many a Jukes. “All these nowadays books about the clipper ships and the beauty of the sea rather weary me at times. The beauty and the grandeur were there. But what a horror was there too. Crews carted around like dogs.” Mr. Adams, like Mr. Wetjen, relates stories of the sea with breadth of knowledge and accuracy of detail possible only to a seaman.
Of the four remaining stories two are of the folk. Ada Jack Carver’s “Singing Woman,” second on Mr. Ramsay’s list, celebrates a custom of the French mulattoes on Isle Brevelle of the Joyous Coast. A gruesome and pathetic contest this between Henriette and Josephine, their ninety-nine and ninety-eight funerals proclaiming them last survivors of wailing women, rivals to the death. By easy management, the author permits them to emerge with drawn honours in “my friend, you and me ull quit even”; and, by her usual sympathy in characterizing the lowly, provokes for the old brown women admiration tempered with pity. A near relative of these wailing ones is George Allan England’s “Johnny Moaner” (see page xxiv), whose calling led him to kill that he might be supplied with a necessary funeral.
In “Four Dreams of Gram Perkins” Ruth Sawyer weaves one of the oddest yarns ever spun from dream stuff, yet as surely of the Maine folk as “Singing Woman” is of the Isle Brevelle natives. In their climactic progress Zeb Perkins’s dreams maintain consistently the ruling passion of Gram’s life as well as the character of Zeb himself, self-appointed layer of Gram’s ghost. Sardonic humour saves these dreams from the horrific as tenderness redeems Ada Jack Carver’s song of death.
“Shades of George Sand!” happens to fall into a category all its own. Mr. Lieber, placing it second, comments on its air of savoir faire and mature quality; the chairman appreciates the rebellion of Mathilde against her environment, her escape into a pseudo-paradise and consequent descent into limbo. Only the clever girl, apparently doomed to rusticity, fired by ancestry, and nourished by experiences vicarious as those which fed Mathilde, can guess with what eagerness Mathilde set out for Chicago. The meanness of Flora Campbell’s respectable boarding house and the defection of Mathilde’s hero may have struck down momentarily the girl’s aspirations; but surely the conference with her tutelary shade gave Mathilde courage to follow her star; and if she has not presided over a salon, she has found something better. The mordant, yeasty humour of this tale should leaven the collection, in general a serious collection.
“The Scarlet Woman,” in length about that of “The Killers,” required greater skill in elimination. Whereas “The Killers” belongs to the true short-story genre in brevity of time, close circumscription of place, and sharply defined conflict, “The Scarlet Woman” is a novel which, paradoxically and exceptionally, succeeds as a short short story. In its 3,000 words, the author, by concentrating the essence of Vergie Winters’s life, has escaped a mere synopsis. To say it differently, he has revealed by high lights the passive conflict one woman endured with the social order, a conflict the motive of which is love. The obstacles in the way, too great to be surmounted, Mr. Bromfield has disregarded with a featness that recalls Columbus’s triumph with the egg.
THE LISTS
Before consulting the appended lists, please note the following abbreviations:
ABBREVIATIONS
_Ad._ _Adventure_ _Am._ _American Magazine_ _Am. Merc._ _American Mercury_ _A. A._ _Argosy Allstory Magazine_ _Arch._ _Archer_ _Atl._ _Atlantic Monthly_ _B. M._ _Black Mask_ _B. B._ _Blue Book Magazine_ _Book._ _Bookman_ _C. W._ _Catholic World_ _C._ _Century Magazine_ _C. T._ _Chicago Tribune_ _Clues_ _Clues Magazine_ _C. H._ _College Humor_ _Col._ _Collier’s Weekly_ _C. G._ _Country Gentleman_ _D._ _Delineator_ _D. S. M._ _Detective Stories Magazine_ _D. S._ _Droll Stories_ _E._ _Echo_ _Elks_ _Elks Magazine_ _Ev._ _Everybody’s Magazine_ _Fl._ _Flynn’s Weekly_ _F._ _Forum_ _G. H._ _Good Housekeeping_ _H. J. Q._ _Haldeman Julius Quarterly_ _H. B._ _Harper’s Bazar_ _H._ _Harper’s Magazine_ _H. I. and C._ _Hearst’s International and Cosmopolitan Magazine_ _L. H. J._ _Ladies’ Home Journal_ _L._ _Liberty_ _McCall._ _McCall’s Magazine_ _McClure._ _McClure’s Magazine_ _Mun._ _Munsey’s Magazine _Op._ _Opportunity_ _P. R._ _Pictorial Review_ _Pop._ _Popular_ _R. B._ _Red Book Magazine_ _S. E. P._ _Saturday Evening Post_ _Scr._ _Scribner’s Magazine_ _S. S._ _Short Stories_ _S. S. M._ _Special Salesman Magazine_ _Sun._ _Sunset Magazine_ _W. T._ _Weird Tales_ _W. S._ _Western Story_ _W. H. C._ _Woman’s Home Companion_ _Y._ _Young’s Magazine_
LIST I
Stories ranking highest:
Abbot, Keene, Tree of Life (_Atl._, Dec., 1926).
Adams, Bill, Jukes (_Ad._, Nov. 23, 1926).
Alexander, Elizabeth, The Purest Passion (_S. E. P._, Feb. 5).
Alexander, Sandra, Passion (_H._ Apr.).
Aley, Maxwell, Man Child (_G. H._, July).
Anderson, Frederick Irving, Wise Money (_S. E. P._, Aug. 6).
Anthony, Joseph, A Hobo He Would Be (_C._, Oct., 1926).
Bailey, Margaret Emerson, Common Law (_H._, Apr.).
Banning, Margaret Culkin, Heads or Tails (_S. E. P._, May 7); The Woman Higher Up (_S. E. P._, May 21).
Beer, Thomas, Piepowder Court (_S. E. P._, Oct. 16, 1926); The Public Life (_S. E. P._, Nov. 20, 1926); Curly-Tailed Wolf (_S. E. P._, Apr. 16); Cramambuli (_S. E. P._, May 7); Æsthetics (_S. E. P._, June 11).
Bellah, James Warner, Fear (_S. E. P._, Nov. 6, 1926); Boppo’s Bicycle (_Col._, Feb. 5); Funny Nose (_S. E. P._, Feb. 5); Old Slithercheeks Takes a Bath (_Col._, Feb. 26); Blood (_S. E. P._, Apr. 2); The Great Tradition (_S. E. P._, May 28); A Gentleman of Blades (_S. E. P._, June 11); M’Givney’s Mustache (_S. E. P._, Aug. 20).
Blake, Clarice, The Mold (_C._, May).
Bradford, Roark, Child of God (_H._, Apr.).
Brady, Mariel, From Four Till Seven (_G. H._, Nov., 1926); April’s Fools (_G. H._, Apr.); Snips and Snails (_G. H._, June).
Brecht, Harold W., Vienna Roast (_H._, Nov., 1926).
Broadhurst, George, The Motive (_S. E. P._, July 2).
Bromfield, Louis, “Let’s Go to Hinkey-Dink’s” (_McCall._, Sept.).
Brush, Katharine, The Other Pendleton (_P. R._, Oct., 1926); Night Club (_H._, Sept.).
Burlingame, Roger, Jacinth (_Scr._, Oct., 1926).
Burt, Katharine Newlin, Jealous Oberon (_C. T._, May 15).
Burt, Struthers, Freedom (_C. T._, Nov. 28, 1926); C’Est La Guerre (_S. E. P._, Feb. 5); Grandpa (_S. E. P._, Apr. 23); Soda Bicarb (_S. E. P._, July 2).
Busch, Niven, Jr., The Wife and the Toreador (_Col._, Aug. 6).
Butler, Ellis Parker, Bruce of the Bar-None (_Sun._, May).
Byrne, Donn, Rivers of Damascus (_McCall_, Oct., 1926).
Canfield, Dorothy, Here Was Magic (_W. H. C._, Feb.).
Carver, Ada Jack, The Old One (_H._, Oct., 1926); Singing Woman (_H._, May).
Chapman, Elisabeth Cobb, With Glory and Honour (_C._, June).
Clark, Valma, Candlelight Inn (_Scr._, Nov., 1926); The Tact of Monsieur Pithou (_Scr._, May).
Clarke, James Mitchell, Punishment (_Ad._, Apr. 1).
Cobb, Irvin S., The Wooden Decoy (_H. I. and C._, Dec., 1926); This Man’s World (_H. I. and C._, May); Louder Than Words (_H. I. and C._, June); As Brands from the Burning (_H. I. and C._, July); Faith with Works (_H. I. and C._, Aug.).
Cohen, Octavus Roy, Idles of the King (_S. E. P._, Aug. 6); The Porter Missing Men (_S. E. P._, Aug. 20).
Connell, Richard, The Lady Killer (_S. E. P._, Nov. 27, 1926); In Society (_S. E. P._, Mch. 5).
Cram, Mildred, From a Château Kitchen (_D._, June).
Crowell, Chester T., The Trick (_S. E. P._, Apr. 2).
Daniels, Roger, Bulldog (_S. E. P._, Nov. 13, 1926).
Davis, Elmer, The Ruinous Woman (_C._, May).
Detzer, Karl W., The Superior Woman (_C._, Jan.).