Those that deal with Pirandello’s own native Sicily have greater warmth, a hint of tenderness. _Lontano_, the story of a Norwegian sailor left, ill with typhoid, by his ship companions at the little town of Porto Empedocle, nursed by the niece of that absurd, delightful, old character, Don Paranza, a Sicilian ‘Vice Consul for Scandinavia,’ finally marrying her, and settling down to live in that sunburnt country, an eternal stranger to every one, including his wife, is genuinely touching. But the undistinguished prose in which it is too wordily told is like a dry field that should be burned over for the sake of the fresh green grass struggling beneath. The last stories in this volume (the fifth) are the best, hint more clearly at the Pirandello of the plays, at both his virtues and his defects; so it is just possible that the entire collection is being made chronologically (though nothing is said of any such plan in the preface), in which case, to judge them fairly, one ought, I suppose, to await the publication of the other nineteen volumes. It would be unfair to blame these stories for lacking profundity of thought, since a story may of course have profound significance without actually expressing any thought at all, were it not that there is a great deal of philosophizing in them, and that often it is made the point of the story. Since this is so, it seems fair to note that the philosophizing is pretty superficial. Take, for instance, the story called _Niente_ (which is far superior to most of the others because it is nearly all in dialogue). A hack doctor is awakened at three in the morning at the pharmacy where he is on duty, to attend a young man who has attempted to commit suicide. But on arrival at the horrible tenement-house in which the tragedy took place, he finds that the victim, dying, has been removed to a hospital. So the whole story is simply conversation--first between the doctor and the annoyed middle-class relative of the suicide, then between the doctor and the wretched inhabitants of the apartment in which the young man had lived. Bit by bit through this dialogue the tragedy and its causes are revealed, with a skill worthy of that displayed in _Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore_. (Indeed, of this story a striking one-act play might easily be made). One would like the point to be merely the revelation of the obscure tragedy, with no more moral to it than to Kipling’s _Without Benefit of Clergy_--or with the tremendous moral of its not having one. But what, instead, do we get? The doctor’s philosophizing. The unfortunate young man (he says) had written verses, wanted to be a poet, dreamed of glory--and the daughter of the house was in love with him. Supposing he had lived, what would his dream of glory have come to? A poor useless book of verse. And his dream of love? ‘Your daughter! He’d have married your daughter!’ he cries to the irate dishevelled mistress of the house.