utchison_ (Harper's Magazine). An
attentive reader of the American short stories during the past few years
may have observed with interest at rare intervals the work of Mr.
Hutchison. In it there was always a promise of an achievement not unlike
that of Perceval Gibbon, but a certain looseness of texture prevented
Mr. Hutchison from being completely persuasive. In "Journey's End,"
however, it must be confessed that he has written a memorable sea story
that is certainly equal at least to the better stories in Mr. Kipling's
latest volume.

39. THE STRANGE-LOOKING MAN by _Fanny Kemble Johnson_ (The Pagan). I
suppose that this story is to be regarded as a sketch rather than a
short story, but in any case it is a vividly rendered picture of war's
effects portrayed with subtle irony and quiet art. I associate it with
"Chautonville" by Will Levington Comfort, and "The Flying Teuton" by
Alice Brown, as one of the three stories with the most authentic
spiritual message in American fiction that the war has produced.

40. THE SEA-TURN by _E. Clement James_ (The Seven Arts). In this study
of the spiritual reactions of a starved environment upon an imaginative
mind, Mrs. Jones has added a convincing character portrait to American
letters which ranks with the better short stories of J. D. Beresford in
a similar _genre_. The story is in the same tradition as that of the
younger English realists, but it is an essential contribution to our
nationalism, and as such helps to point the way toward the future in
which a true national literature must find its only and inevitable
realization.

41. THE CALLER IN THE NIGHT by _Burton Kline_ (The Stratford Journal). I
believe that Mr. Kline has completely realized in this story a fine
imaginative situation and has presented a folk story with a significant
legendary quality. It is in the tradition of Hawthorne, but the
substance with which Mr. Kline deals is the substance of his own people,
and consequently that in which his creative impulse has found the freest
scope. It may be compared to its own advantage with "The Lost Phoebe" by
Theodore Dreiser, which was equally memorable among the folk-stories of
1916, and the comparison suggests that in both cases the author's
training as a novelist has not been to his disadvantage as a short-story
teller.

42. WHEN DID YOU WRITE YOUR MOTHER LAST? by _Addison Lewis_ (Reedy's
Mirror). This is the only story I have read in three years in which it
seeme