Produced by Michael Gray SHORT STORY CLASSICS (AMERICAN) VOLUME TWO EDITED BY WILLIAM PATTEN WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES P. F. COLLIER & SON NEW YORK COPYRIGHT 1905 BY P. F. COLLIER & SON ---------------- The use of the copyrighted stories in this collection has been authorized in every instance by the authors or their representatives. CONTENTS--VOLUME II THE BRIGADE COMMANDER J. W. DEFOREST WHO WAS SHE? BAYARD TAYLOR MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH BROTHER SEBASTIAN'S FRIENDSHIP HAROLD FREDERIC A GOOD-FOR-NOTHING HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN THE IDYL OF RED GULCH BRET HARTE CRUTCH, THE PAGE GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND ("GATH") IN EACH OTHER'S SHOES GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP THE DENVER EXPRESS A. A. HAYES JAUNE D'ANTIMOINE THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER OLE 'STRACTED THOMAS NELSON PAGE OUR CONSUL AT CARLSRUHE F. J. STIMSON ("J. S. OF DALE") THE BRIGADE COMMANDER --------------------- BY J. W. DE FOREST _ John William De Forest (born March 36, 1826, in Seymour, Ct.) at the outbreak of the Rebellion abandoned a promising career as a historian and writer of books of travel to enlist in the Union army. He served throughout the entire war, first as captain, then as major, and so acquired a thorough knowledge of military tactics and the psychology of our war which enabled him, on his return to civil life, to write the best war stories of his generation. Of these "The Brigade Commander" is Mr. De Forest's masterpiece. Solidly grounded on experience, and drawing its emotive power from our greatest national cataclysm, like a Niagara dynamo the story sends us a thrill undiminishing with the increasing distance of its source._ THE BRIGADE COMMANDER BY J. W. DEFOREST [Footnote: By permission of "The New York Times."] The Colonel was the idol of his bragging old regiment and of the bragging brigade which for the last six months he had commanded. He was the idol, not because he was good and gracious, not because he spared his soldiers or treated them as fellow-citizens, but because he had led them to victory and made them famous. If a man will win battles and give his brigade a right to brag loudly of its doings, he may have its admiration and even its enthusiastic devotion, though he be as pitiless and as wicked as Lucifer.