novel-writer, but certainly at least four of the short stories which he
has published during the past year are notable artistic achievements in
widely different moods. If tragedy prevails, it is purified by a fine
spiritual idealism, which takes symbols and makes of them something more
human than a mere allegory. If an American publisher were courageous
enough to start publishing a series of volumes of short stories by
contemporary American writers, he could not do better than to begin with
a selection of Mr. Dobie's tales.

18. A LITTLE NIPPER OF HIDE-AN'-SEEK HARBOR by _Norman Duncan_
(Pictorial Review). This story has a melancholy interest, because it was
the last story sold by its author before his sudden death last year. But
it would have been remembered for its own sake as the last and not the
least important of the long series of Newfoundland sagas which Mr.
Duncan has given us. It shows that Norman Duncan kept his artistic vigor
to the last, and those who know Newfoundland can testify that such
stories as these will always remain its most permanent literary record.

19. THE EMPEROR OF ELAM by _H. G. Dwight_ (The Century Magazine). Those
who have read Mr. Dwight's volume of short stories entitled "Stamboul
Nights" do not need to be told that Mr. Dwight is the one American short
story writer whom we may confidently set beside Joseph Conrad as a
master in a similar literary field. American editors have been diffident
about publishing his stories for reasons which cast more discredit on
the American editor than on Mr. Dwight, and accordingly it is a genuine
pleasure to encounter "The Emperor of Elam," and to chronicle the
hardihood of the editor of the Century Magazine. The story is a modern
odyssey of adventure, set as usual in the Turkish background with which
Mr. Dwight is most familiar. In it atmosphere is realized completely for
its own sake, and as a motive power urging the lives of his characters
to their inevitable end.

20. THE GAY OLD DOG by _Edna Ferber_ (Metropolitan Magazine) is in my
opinion the big story which "The Eldest" was not. It is my belief that
Edna Ferber is a novelist first and a short story writer afterwards, but
in "The Gay Old Dog" she has accepted a theme which can best be handled
in the short story form and has made the most of it artistically, much
as Fannie Hurst has done in all of her better stories. Miss Ferber has
not sentimentalized her substance as she does most often, but has l