After Poe and Hawthorne almost the first author in America to make a vertiginous impression by his short stories was Bret Harte. The wide and sudden popularity he attained by the publication of his two short stories, _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ (1868) and _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_ (1869), has already been noted.[7] But one story just before Harte that astonished the fiction audience with its power and art was Harriet Prescott Spofford’s (1835– ) _The Amber Gods_ (January and February, 1860, Atlantic), with its startling ending, “I must have died at ten minutes past one.” After Harte the next story to make a great sensation was Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s _Marjorie Daw_ (April, 1873, _Atlantic_), a story with a surprise at the end, as had been his _A Struggle for Life_ (July, 1867, _Atlantic_), although it was only _Marjorie Daw_ that attracted much attention at the time. Then came George Washington Cable’s (1844– ) “_Posson Jone’_,” (April 1, 1876, _Appleton’s Journal_) and a little later Charles Egbert Craddock’s (1850– ) _The Dancin’ Party at Harrison’s Cove_ (May, 1878, _Atlantic_) and _The Star in the Valley_ (November, 1878, _Atlantic_). But the work of Cable and Craddock, though of sterling worth, won its way gradually. Even Edward Everett Hale’s (1822–1909) _My Double; and How He Undid Me_ (September, 1859, _Atlantic_) and _The Man Without a Country_ (December, 1863, _Atlantic_) had fallen comparatively still-born. The truly astounding short story successes, after Poe and Hawthorne, then, were Spofford, Bret Harte and Aldrich. Next came Frank Richard Stockton (1834–1902). “The interest created by the appearance of _Marjorie Daw_,” says Prof. Pattee, “was mild compared with that accorded to Frank R. Stockton’s _The Lady or the Tiger?_ (1884). Stockton had not the technique of Aldrich nor his naturalness and ease. Certainly he had not his atmosphere of the _beau monde_ and his grace of style, but in whimsicality and unexpectedness and in that subtle art that makes the obviously impossible seem perfectly plausible and commonplace he surpassed not only him but Edward Everett Hale and all others. After Stockton and _The Lady or the Tiger?_ it was realized even by the uncritical that short story writing had become a subtle art and that the master of its subtleties had his reader at his mercy.”[8] The publication of Stockton’s short stories covers a period of over forty years, from _Mahala’s Drive_ (November, 1868, _Lippincott’s_) to _The Trouble She Caused When She Kissed_ (December, 1911, _Ladies’ Home Journal_), published nine years after his death. Among the more notable of his stories may be mentioned: _The Transferred Ghost_ (May, 1882, _Century_), _The Lady or the Tiger?_ (November, 1882, _Century_), _The Reversible Landscape_ (July, 1884, _Century_), _The Remarkable Wreck of the “Thomas Hyke”_ (August, 1884, _Century_), _“His Wife’s Deceased Sister”_ (January, 1884, _Century_), _A Tale of Negative Gravity_