Caroline Matilda Stansbury Kirkland (1801–1864) wrote of the frontier life of the Middle West in the mid-nineteenth century. Her principal collection of short stories is _Western Clearings_ (1845), from which _The Schoolmaster’s Progress_, first published in _The Gift_ for 1845 (out in 1844), is taken. Other stories republished in that collection are _The Ball at Thram’s Huddle_ (April, 1840, _Knickerbocker Magazine_), _Recollections of the Land-Fever_ (September, 1840, _Knickerbocker Magazine_), and _The Bee-Tree_ (_The Gift_ for 1842; out in 1841). Her description of the country schoolmaster, “a puppet cut out of shingle and jerked by a string,” and the local color in general of this and other stories give her a leading place among the writers of her period who combined fidelity in delineating frontier life with sufficient fictional interest to make a pleasing whole of permanent value. George William Curtis (1824–1892) gained his chief fame as an essayist, and probably became best known from the department which he conducted, from 1853, as _The Editor’s Easy Chair_ for _Harper’s Magazine_ for many years. His volume, _Prue and I_ (1856), contains many fictional elements, and a story from it, _Titbottom’s Spectacles_, which first appeared in Putnam’s Monthly for December, 1854, is given in this volume because it is a good humorous short story rather than because of its author’s general eminence in this field. Other stories of his worth noting are _The Shrouded Portrait_ (in _The Knickerbocker Gallery_, 1855) and _The Millenial Club_ (November, 1858, _Knickerbocker Magazine_).