one of the leading American writers of
"familiar verse." Frederick Locker-Lampson in the preface to the first
edition of his _Lyra Elegantiarum_ (1867) declared that Holmes was
"perhaps the best living writer of this species of verse." His
trenchant attack on _Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions_ (1842)
makes us wonder what would have been his attitude toward some of the
beliefs of our own day; Christian Science, for example. He might have
"exposed" it under some such title as _The Religio-Medical
Masquerade_, or brought the batteries of his humor to bear on it in
the manner of Robert Louis Stevenson's fable, _Something In It_:
"Perhaps there is not much in it, as I supposed; but there is
something in it after all. Let me be thankful for that." In Holmes'
long works of fiction, Elsie Venner (1861), _The Guardian Angel_
(1867) and _A Mortal Antipathy_ (1885), the method is still somewhat
that of the essayist. I have found a short piece of fiction by him in
the March, 1832, number of _The New England Magazine_, called _The
Debut_, signed O.W.H. _The Story of Iris_ in _The Professor at the
Breakfast Table_, which ran in _The Atlantic_ throughout 1859, and _A
Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters_ (January, 1861,
_Atlantic_) are his only other brief fictions of which I am aware. The
last named has been given place in the present selection because it is
characteristic of a certain type and period of American humor,
although its short story qualities are not particularly strong.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), who achieved fame as "Mark
Twain," is only incidentally a short story writer, although he wrote
many short pieces of fiction. His humorous quality, I mean, is so
preponderant, that one hardly thinks of the form. Indeed, he is never
very strong in fictional construction, and of the modern short story
art he evidently knew or cared little. He is a humorist in the large
sense, as are Rabelais and Cervantes, although he is also a humorist
in various restricted applications of the word that are wholly
American. _The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County_ was his
first publication of importance, and it saw the light in the Nov. 18,
1865, number of _The Saturday Press_. It was republished in the
collection, _The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and
Other Sketches_, in 1867. Others of his best pieces of short fiction
are: _The Canvasser's Tale_ (December, 1876, _Atlantic Monthly_), _The
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