Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) AMERICANS ALL STORIES OF AMERICAN LIFE OF TO-DAY EDITED BY BENJAMIN A. HEYDRICK Editor "Types of the Short Story," etc. [Illustration: Publisher's logo] NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY. N. J. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For permission to reprint the stories in this volume, acknowledgement is made to the owners of the copyrights, as follows: For "The Right Promethean Fire," to Mrs. Atwood, R. Martin and Doubleday, Page & Company. For "The Land of Heart's Desire," to Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Company. For "The Tenor," to Alice I. Bunner and to Charles Scribners' Sons. For "The Passing of Priscilla Winthrop," to William Allen White and The Macmillan Company. For "The Gift of the Magi," to Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Company. For "The Gold Brick," copyright 1910, to Brand Whitlock and to The Bobbs, Merrill Company. For "His Mother's Son," to Edna Ferber and the Frederick A. Stokes Company. For "Bitter-Sweet," to Fannie Hurst and Harper & Brothers. For "The Riverman," to Stewart Edward White and Doubleday, Page & Company. For "Flint and Fire," to Dorothy Canfield Fisher and Messrs. Henry Holt & Company. For "The Ordeal at Mt. Hope," to Mrs. Alice Dunbar, Mrs. Mathilde Dunbar, and Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Company. For "Israel Drake," to Katherine Mayo and Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company. For "The Struggles and Triumph of Isidro," to James M. Hopper. For "The Citizen," to James F. Dwyer and the Paget Literary Agency. PREFACE In the years before the war, 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?