The short story commenced its career as a verbal utterance, or, as Robert Louis Stevenson puts it, with "the first men who told their stories round the savage campfire."

The short story is today our most common literary product. It is read by everyone. Not every boy or girl will read novels after leaving school, but every boy or girl is certain to read short stories. It is important in the high school to guide taste and appreciation in short story reading, so that the reading of days when school life is over will be healthful and encouraging.

Here is a collection that is entirely modern. The authors represented are among the leading authors of the day, the stories are principally stories of present-day life, the themes are themes of present-day thought. The students who read this book will be more awake to the present, and will be better citizens of today.

The great number of stories presented has given opportunity to illustrate different types of short story writing.

Contents:

Washington Irving. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Edgar Allan Poe. The Gold Bug

Herman Melville. Bartleby, the Scrivener

Bret Harte. The Luck of Roaring Camp

Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Rudyard Kipling. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper

Anton Chekhov. The Lady with the Dog

D.H. Lawrence. The Prussian Officer

James Joyce. Araby

Ivan Turgenev. First Love

Nikolay Gogol. The Mantle

Mikhail Bulgakov. The Embroidered Towel

Ivan Bunin. The Gentleman from San Francisco

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Carmilla

O.Henry. The Gift of the Magi

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

Robert Louis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

H.G. Wells. The Magic Shop

W.W. Jacobs. The Monkey's Paw

Arthur Conan Doyle. His Last Bow

Henry James. Daisy Miller

H.P. Lovecraft. The Call of Cthulhu

Alexsandr Pushkin. The Queen of Spades

G.K. Chesterton. The Blue Cross