iod 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