when we had more time for light pursuits, a
favorite sport of reviewers was to hunt for the Great American Novel.
They gave tongue here and there, and pursued the quarry with great
excitement in various directions, now north, now south, now west, and
the inevitable disappointment at the end of the chase never deterred
them from starting off on a fresh scent next day. But in spite of all
the frenzied pursuit, the game sought, the Great American Novel, was
never captured. Will it ever be captured? The thing they sought was a
book that would be so broad, so typical, so true that it would stand as
the adequate expression in fiction of American life. Did these tireless
hunters ever stop to ask themselves, what is the Great French Novel?
what is the Great English Novel? And if neither of these nations has
produced a single book which embodies their national life, why should we
expect that our life, so much more diverse in its elements, so
multifarious in its aspects, could ever be summed up within the covers
of a single book?

Yet while the critics continued their hopeless hunt, there was growing
up in this country a form of fiction which gave promise of some day
achieving the task that this never-to-be written novel should
accomplish. This form was the short story. It was the work of many
hands, in many places. Each writer studied closely a certain locality,
and transcribed faithfully what he saw. Thus the New England village,
the western ranch, the southern plantation, all had their chroniclers.
Nor was it only various localities that we saw in these one-reel
pictures; they dealt with typical occupations, there were stories of
travelling salesmen, stories of lumbermen, stories of politicians,
stories of the stage, stories of school and college days. If it were
possible to bring together in a single volume a group of these, each one
reflecting faithfully one facet of our many-sided life, would not such a
book be a truer picture of America than any single novel could present?

The present volume is an attempt to do this. That it is only an attempt,
that it does not cover the whole field of our national life, no one
realizes better than the compiler. The title _Americans All_ signifies
that the characters in the book are all Americans, not that they are all
of the Americans.

This book then differs in its purpose from other collections of short
stories. It does not aim to present the world's best short stories, nor
to illus