In the eight years of _O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories_, no reviewer of the annual collection--so far as I have discovered--has ever suggested a better story of a given year than those included between its covers. The fact is either gratifying or amusing; gratifying if the reviewer recognizes the selections as one of the best possible in the premises; amusing if the reviewer damns the whole lot--unless, to be sure, he damns all stories published in the period. The Committee know what they demand in a story and read hundreds to salvage the comparatively few which best meet the demand. The first desideratum is a narrative constructed about characters in a struggle or complication having a definite outcome expressed or implied. Every story in this book satisfies this first test. In “Child of God” the struggle is Willie’s against the social order; the order crushes him, but by his death he wins; The Killers are out for their man and, though they fail this time, ultimately they will not fail; the Scarlet Woman is at odds with society; Jukes agonizes to escape from the sea--he never will escape; “Fear” is nothing less at bottom than the conflict in Paterson’s soul; on the surface it offers a display of spectacular conflicts between enemy planes; “Night Club” hints at a half-dozen conflicts (see page 84); “Singing Woman” relates the final stages in a lifelong rivalry; “He Man” instances a struggle with the sea and hunger; I have spoken of the struggle in “Done Got Over” as one between superstition and enlightenment; of that in “Shades of George Sand!” as one between the individual and environment; “With Glory and Honour” implies pretty strongly that Hal Levering conquered himself before he changed his ways; “Monkey Motions” reveals awkwardness and genius working to final expression; “Four Dreams” relates four vain efforts of Gram; Bulldog’s fights and his escape lead to his climactic rescue of the judge; “The Little Girl” symbolizes the helplessness of all childhood through the concrete instance of Patricia’s failure. All writers and all critics are agreed upon other well-known desiderata, which neither the author nor the critic needs consciously to enumerate. Familiarity with the laws and limitations of the art is as necessary to judging fiction as insistence upon them is deplorable if such insistence means undervaluing a narrative that may smash all laws and succeed, it may so happen, because of the fact. He who follows an uncharted way may discover, or he may not discover, new lands. That standards of reviewers differ may be illustrated by the following quotations drawn from reviewers of _O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories_, 1926: