27. _The Little Family_ (Harper’s Magazine) and 28. _The Visit of the Master_ (Harper’s Magazine), by _Arthur Johnson_. These stories have nothing in common except the fact that they reinforce Mr. Johnson’s claim this year to rank with Mrs. Gerould, Wilbur Daniel Steele, H. G. Dwight, and Charles Caldwell Dobie as one of the most finished artists in America to-day. “The Visit of the Master” is an altogether delightful social comedy, not without a moral. “The Little Family,” on the other hand, is a poignant study of the effect of war on the gentle imaginations of two lonely men. Its quality makes us think of the relation between Stevenson and his old nurse, and stylistically it is admirable. I suggest with all diffidence, and from a point of view of frank personal preference that it is very possibly the best short story of the year. 29. _In the Open Code_, by _Burton Kline_ (The Stratford Journal). This brief tale in sharp outline recounts a single human incident. Romantic in treatment, it is told with the eye on the object. It is a finished piece of workmanship. 30. _The Willow Walk_, by _Sinclair Lewis_ (Saturday Evening Post). It was an interesting problem which presented itself to Mr. Lewis when he thought of writing this story. Could a criminal of marked intellectual ability create a dual personality for himself by inventing an imaginary brother, give up his own personality after his crime, and live on undetected in the continuous imaginative realization of his new personality? Mr. Lewis has studied the psychological effects of such a successful impersonation and shown the destructive force of mental suggestion on the soul, in a manner which is in interesting contrast to that employed by Charles Caldwell Dobie in the story which I have mentioned above. 31. _The Haymakers_ (Stratford Journal) and 32. _Old Lady Hudson_ (The Midland), by _Jeannette Marks_. These two allegorical stories are written in what is usually a most hazardous literary form. I think that Miss Marks has steered clear of Scylla and Charybdis successfully, and pointed out to a somewhat deaf world the imaginative realities which underlie the commercial crust of our American civilization. These stories, and others of similar tenor, are to be published shortly in a volume entitled “Forgotten Sins.” 33. _Nettle and Foxglove_, by _Marjory Morten_ (Century Magazine). This is a study in conflicting temperaments which is very gently rendered with an art that recalls in its subtlety that of Miss Ethel Sidgwick’s novels. A collection of Mrs. Morten’s studies, reprinted from the files of the Century Magazine, would make an interesting volume.