Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/19

Rh fulfil, or to lead out a subordinate character as though he were chief. Another story suffers from plethora of phrasing, and even of mere diction. Stevenson believed few of his words too precious to be cut: contemporary writers hold their utterances in greater esteem. A third story shows by its obvious happy ending that the author has catered to magazine needs or what he conceives to be editorial policies. Such an author acquires a near “Smart Set” sparkle or a pseudo-Atlantic Monthly sobriety; he develops facility, but at the expense, ultimately, of conventionality, dullness and boredom.

According to the terms which omit foreign authors from possible participation in the prize, the work of Achmed Abdullah, Britten Austin, Elinor Mordaunt and others was in effect non-existent for the Committee. “Reprisal,” by Mr. Austin, ranks high as a specimen of real short-story art, strong in structure, rich in suggestion. “The Honourable Gentleman,” by the mage from Afghanistan, in reflecting Oriental life in the Occident, will take its place in literary history. Elinor Mordaunt’s modernized biblical stories—“The Strong Man,” for instance—in showing that the cycles repeat themselves and that today is as one of five thousand years ago exemplify the universality of certain motifs, fables, characters.

But, having made allowance for the truths just recounted, the Committee believe that the average of stories here bound together is high. They respond to the test of form and of life. “The Kitchen Gods” grows from five years of service to the women of China—service by the author, who is a doctor of medicine. “Porcelain Cups” testifies to the interest a genealogist finds in the Elizabethan Age and, more definitely, in the life of Christopher Marlowe. The hardships of David, in the story by Mr. Derieux, are those of a boy in a particular Southern neighbourhood the author knows. Miss Louise Rice, who boasts a strain of Romany blood, spends part of her year with the gypsies. Mr. Terhune is familiar, from the life, with his prototypes of “On Strike.” “Turkey Red” relates a real experience, suited to fiction or to poetry—if Wordsworth was right—for it is an instance