Читать книгу The Best American Humorous Short Stories - Various - Страница 5

Dunno, perhaps

One of the yaps

Like me would make

A holy break

Doing his turn

With money to burn.

Anyhow, I

Wouldn't shy

Making a try!

and containing, among many effective touches, the pathetic lines,

… I'd help

The poor who try to help themselves,

Who have to work so hard for bread

They can't get very far ahead.

When James Lane Allen's novel, The Reign of Law, came out (1900), a little quatrain by Lampton that appeared in The Bookman (September, 1900) swept like wildfire across the country, and was read by a hundred times as many people as the book itself:

"The Reign of Law"?

Well, Allen, you're lucky;

It's the first time it ever

Rained law in Kentucky!

The reader need not be reminded that at that period Kentucky family feuds were well to the fore. As Lampton had started as a poet, the editors were bound to keep him pigeon-holed as far as they could, and his ambition to write short stories was not at first much encouraged by them. His predicament was something like that of the chief character of Frank R. Stockton's story, "His Wife's Deceased Sister" (January, 1884, Century), who had written a story so good that whenever he brought the editors another story they invariably answered in substance, "We're afraid it won't do. Can't you give us something like 'His Wife's Deceased Sister'?" This was merely Stockton's turning to account his own somewhat similar experience with the editors after his story, The Lady or the Tiger? (November, 1882, Century) appeared. Likewise the editors didn't want Lampton's short stories for a while because they liked his poems so well.

Do I hear some critics exclaiming that there is nothing remarkable about How the Widow Won the Deacon, the story by Lampton included in this volume? It handles an amusing situation lightly and with grace. It is one of those things that read easily and are often difficult to achieve. Among his best stories are: The People's Number of the Worthyville Watchman (May 12, 1900, Saturday Evening Post), Love's Strange Spell (April 27, 1901, Saturday Evening Post), Abimelech Higgins' Way (August 24, 1001, Saturday Evening Post), A Cup of Tea (March, 1902, Metropolitan), Winning His Spurs (May, 1904, Cosmopolitan), The Perfidy of Major Pulsifer (November, 1909, Cosmopolitan), How the Widow Won the Deacon (April, 1911, Harper's Bazaar), and A Brown Study (December, 1913, Lippincott's). There is no collection as yet of his short stories. Although familiarly known as "Colonel" Lampton, and although of Kentucky, he was not merely a "Kentucky Colonel," for he was actually appointed Colonel on the staff of the governor of Kentucky. At the time of his death he was about to be made a brigadier-general and was planning to raise a brigade of Kentucky mountaineers for service in the Great War. As he had just struck his stride in short story writing, the loss to literature was even greater than the patriotic loss.

Gideon (April, 1914, Century), by Wells Hastings (1878- ), the story with which this volume closes, calls to mind the large number of notable short stories in American literature by writers who have made no large name for themselves as short story writers, or even otherwise in letters. American literature has always been strong in its "stray" short stories of note. In Mr. Hastings' case, however, I feel that the fame is sure to come. He graduated from Yale in 1902, collaborated with Brian Hooker (1880- ) in a novel, The Professor's Mystery (1911) and alone wrote another novel, The Man in the Brown Derby (1911). His short stories include: The New Little Boy (July, 1911, American), That Day (September, 1911, American), The Pick-Up (December, 1911, Everybody's), and Gideon (April, 1914, Century). The last story stands out. It can be compared without disadvantage to the best work, or all but the very best work, of Thomas Nelson Page, it seems to me. And from the reader's standpoint it has the advantage—is this not also an author's advantage?—of a more modern setting and treatment. Mr. Hastings is, I have been told, a director in over a dozen large corporations. Let us hope that his business activities will not keep him too much away from the production of literature—for to rank as a piece of literature, something of permanent literary value, Gideon is surely entitled.