39. _His Escape_, by _Will Payne_ (Saturday Evening Post). I regard this as the best newspaper story published in America since “The Stolen Story.” It has quick dramatic action, well stressed conflict, clean-cut characterization, and a thoroughly adequate conclusion. If the style is somewhat staccato, this is perhaps in harmony with the character of the story. 40. _The Toast to Forty-Five_, by _William Dudley Pelley_ (Pictorial Review). Mr. Pelley has “the human touch.” His stories of Paris, Vermont, have a homely quality which never over-stresses the emotional values, even when it almost seems as if the author were going to sentimentalize them. No work could be more indigenous to the soil. Its very roughnesses are a product of environment. Though Mr. Pelley as yet entirely lacks style, there is a driving force within him which should finally shape a personal style in much the same manner as may be observed in the evolution of Irvin S. Cobb’s best work. 41. _The Poet_, by _Lawrence Perry_ (Harper’s Magazine). This story is a study in courage similar in quality to “A Certain Rich Man,” which I published last year in “The Best Short Stories of 1917.” It is very deliberately built up as a literary problem, but with unquestionable artistic sincerity. It would have been easy to key this story too tightly from an emotional point of view, but Mr. Perry’s feeling in the matter has been sure. 42. _Green Umbrellas_, by _Lucy Pratt_ (Pictorial Review). Symbolism is woven into this story as modestly as in “The Sun Chaser” by Jeannette Marks, which appeared in the same magazine during 1916. Miss Pratt has abandoned her negro character stories for the time being, and written about a little boy who brings his parents together. It is slightly sentimentalized, but this is a weakness which the other excellent qualities of the story largely neutralize. 43. _David and Jonathan_, by _Mary Brecht Pulver_ (Mother’s Magazine). This idyl of boyhood friendship, which may not have come to the attention of many readers, has interested me as much as Roland Pertwee’s notable study of adolescence, entitled “Red and White.” It is a study in loyalties seen from a boy’s point of view, mirroring as it does later, if no firmer, loyalties of men and women. 44. _The Sixth Man_, by _George Palmer Putnam_ (Ladies’ Home Journal). It is claimed by the author of this story that it is based on fact. Whether this is so or not, it is an interesting study of a possible historical situation woven around the death of Edith Cavell. It seems to me a made story rather than a told story, but granting this weakness which has not been sufficiently covered, it is noteworthy in its way.