The Story is by “Anderson.” What, _our_ Mr. Anderson? Great Heavens, no! Hans Christian Andersen. * * * * * I have not the space to speak in detail of more than one of the Stories in Mr. O’Brien’s collection, nor will it be necessary; one specimen of the deadly _Amonita Bulbosa_ in a mess of mushrooms is enough to justify the partaker thereof in damning the whole dish, if he live to express any opinion at all; so, if in a collection that claims to be composed of “Best Short Stories” I find one that is very bad in both Substance and Form, indeed so bad in Substance that it hardly deserves to be called a Story at all, I may surely, with perfect justice, damn the whole book as being false to its title and not what it pretends to be. But in censuring Mr. Anderson’s story “Brothers,” I am not so much criticizing the author as admonishing the compiler of “The Best Stories” for the gross misuse of an Asterisk. One does not have to be an officer of the S. P. C. A. to rebuke a truck driver who is abusing a horse that is hitched to a truckload of junk that is much too heavy for it. By the same token, I do not pose as a critic when I take Mr. O’Brien to task for hitching an Asterisk to Sherwood Anderson’s story, “Brothers.” I should not have noticed the Anderson load of junk, but for the stupidity of its driver, which annoys me. It is no way to treat an Asterisk. * * * * * The kindest thing that can be said of “Brothers” is that its inclusion in a collection of American Short Stories puts it in a false position. It is unmistakably American—the mark of the “Melting Pot” is all over it—and I suppose it is Short, though it takes a lot of patience to read it, but it is _not_ a story in the accepted sense of the word. It starts nowhere, it does nothing and it gets nowhere, reminding one vaguely of the three Japanese monkeys who see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing. To apply the O’Brien test, it has no Substance. The weaver went through the motions of weaving, but he wove nothing. There is no “stuff” here. Neither has it Form. The material—such as it is—is not shaped “into the most beautiful and satisfying form by skillful selection and arrangement.” That is to say, it violates Mr. O’Brien’s own rule. If I were asked to give the thing a name, I should say that “Brothers” is a sort of cross between a very dull parody of one of G. S. Street’s “Episodes” and a grimy but ambitious newspaper “story” touched up with a dash of that old-fashioned freak of lap-dog literature known as the “Poem in Prose,” much petted by Turgenieff in the early eighties, a vehicle—if one may be permitted to change similes in midstream—in which you pay as you enter and as you leave, both. You pay as you enter with a soddenly self-conscious rhapsody in G minor, and you pay as you leave with a tiresome repetition of the same.