Do I hear some critics exclaiming that there is nothing remarkable about _How the Widow Won the Deacon_, the story by Lampton included in this volume? It handles an amusing situation lightly and with grace. It is one of those things that read easily and are often difficult to achieve. Among his best stories are: _The People’s Number of the Worthyville Watchman_ (May 12, 1900, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Love’s Strange Spell_ (April 27, 1901, _Saturday Evening Post_), _Abimelech Higgins’ Way_ (August 24, 1001, _Saturday Evening Post_), _A Cup of Tea_ (March, 1902, _Metropolitan_), _Winning His Spurs_ (May, 1904, _Cosmopolitan_), _The Perfidy of Major Pulsifer_ (November, 1909, _Cosmopolitan_), _How the Widow Won the Deacon_ (April, 1911, _Harper’s Bazaar_), and _A Brown Study_ (December, 1913, _Lippincott’s_). There is no collection as yet of his short stories. Although familiarly known as “Colonel” Lampton, and although of Kentucky, he was not merely a “Kentucky Colonel,” for he was actually appointed Colonel on the staff of the governor of Kentucky. At the time of his death he was about to be made a brigadier-general and was planning to raise a brigade of Kentucky mountaineers for service in the Great War. As he had just struck his stride in short story writing, the loss to literature was even greater than the patriotic loss. _Gideon_ (April, 1914, _Century_), by Wells Hastings (1878– ), the story with which this volume closes, calls to mind the large number of notable short stories in American literature by writers who have made no large name for themselves as short story writers, or even otherwise in letters. American literature has always been strong in its “stray” short stories of note. In Mr. Hastings’ case, however, I feel that the fame is sure to come. He graduated from Yale in 1902, collaborated with Brian Hooker (1880- ) in a novel, _The Professor’s Mystery_ (1911) and alone wrote another novel, _The Man in the Brown Derby_ (1911). His short stories include: _The New Little Boy_ (July, 1911, _American_), _That Day_ (September, 1911, _American_), _The Pick-Up_ (December, 1911, _Everybody’s_), and _Gideon_ (April, 1914, _Century_). The last story stands out. It can be compared without disadvantage to the best work, or all but the very best work, of Thomas Nelson Page, it seems to me. And from the reader’s standpoint it has the advantage—is this not also an author’s advantage?—of a more modern setting and treatment. Mr. Hastings is, I have been told, a director in over a dozen large corporations. Let us hope that his business activities will not keep him too much away from the production of literature—for to rank as a piece of literature, something of permanent literary value, _Gideon_ is surely entitled. ALEXANDER JESSUP. FOOTNOTES: [1] This I have attempted in _Representative American Short Stories_ (Allyn & Bacon: Boston, 1922).