^ >5 «3I* m Jnno 1778 • '•€* 'A # PHILLIPS-ACADEMY OQ OIJWR-WHJ^HLL-HOM LIB R A P. Y For eighteen years the reading pubhc has looked to the 0. Henry Memorial Award Com¬ mittee for the outstanding best of the year’s crop of short stories. Since 1933 Harry Hansen’s alert and brilliant editing has imbued each succeeding volume with increasing interest and vitality. And now, for 1937, he presents I an especially distinguished roster I of writers, including Stephen Vincent Benet, Nancy Hale, Allan Seager, Benjamin Appel, ; Virginia Bird, Rorert Penn Warren, Charles Martin and many others, both known and hitherto unknown, whose writings are representative of the best currents of contemporary short- story writing. 2611-37 O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD PRIZE STORIES OF 1937 j* O. HENRY MEMORIAL AWARD SELECTED AND EDITED BY HARRY HANSEN Literary Editor of the New York World-Telegram DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK PRINTED AT THE Country Life Press, garden city, n, y., u. s. a, P93 coPYfei&HT, 1937 BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1936 BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1936 BY THE VIRGINIA QUARTERLY REVIEW COPYRIGHT, 1936, 1937 BY P-R PUBLISHING CORPORATION COPYRIGHT, 1936j 1937 BY STORY MAGAZINE, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY CHARLES SCRIBNEr’s SONS COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY YANKEE, INC. COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY THE MCCALL COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY HAROLD G. MERRIAM COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY ATLANTIC MONTHLY CO. COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW CORPORATION COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY HARPER AND BROTHERS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FIRST EDITION CONTENTS* PAGE Introduction. By Harry Hansen.vii The Devil and Daniel Webster. By Stephen Vincent BenU. 3 To Those Who Wait. By Elick Moll.21 The Fury. By Robert M. Coates ..35 Awroopdedoop! By Benjamin Appel .... 45 For Nancy’s Sake. By Virginia Bird .... 55 The Chicory Neighbors. By David Cornel DeJong . 65 To THE North. By Nancy Hale.77 Gods of Darkness. By Charles Hilton.loi The Saluting Doll. By Hamlen Hunt . m The Last Meeting. By William March . 123 Hobogenesis. Bj; Charles Martin.139 The Gladiator. ByJ.M.McKeon.151 My Girls. By John O’Hara.165 Man Among Men. By Katharine Patten . 171^. The Spaniard. By Prudencio de Pereda .... 187 Pro Arte. By Allan Seager.199 Job’s Tears. By James Still.213 Whip-Poor-Willie. By Jesse Stuart.225 A Woman Like Dilsie. By David Thibault . 243 Christmas Gift. By Robert Penn Warren . 269 Thomas Hardy’s Meat. By Jerome Weidman . 283 *After the prize stories, the order is alphabetical by authors. INTRODUCTION Tms IS the nineteenth annual volume of the O. Henry Memo¬ rial Prize Stories. For nineteen years the editors have at¬ tempted to keep pace with the main currents of American fiction and to choose a representative number of good stories from the pages of American magazines. The year of selection closes in July and the report is published annually in Novem¬ ber. It is perhaps useful to repeat that this collection is pub- hshed not in imitation but in honor of O. Henry, and in rec¬ ognition of the short story as a living art, deserving of critical encouragement and public appreciation. The prizes for 1937 were awarded by the following judges, in co-operation with the editor of this anthology: Herschel Brickell, literary editor of the New York Post, author and lecturer, who has also had experience as editor for a general publishing house. Lewis Gannett, conductor of the daily column, “Books and Things,” in the New York Herald-Tribune, author and reviewer of wide experience. Robert van Gelder, reviewer for “Books of the Times” in the New York Times. THE AWARDS OE 193 7 First prize of $300 for the best short story—To Stephen > Vincent Benet, of New York City, for “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” published in the Saturday Evening Post. Second prize of $200 for the next best short story—^To Eiick Moll, of New York City, for “To Those Who Wait,” published in Scribner's Magazine. Third prize of fioo for the next best short story—To Robert M. Coates, of New York City, for “The Fury,” published in the New Yorker. Until this year the method of awarding prizes has been so involved that only an adding machine could master it. The vii Vlll INTRODUCTION object was to achieve equal and exact justice, to weigh care- fuUy the wishes of the judges. It happened, such was the sys¬ tem, that the first prize sometimes went to an author whose story had not been chosen for first place by any of the judges, but who nosed out competitors on points. Since judges were often in doubt about ratings, citing their difficulty in making a choice between two stories, and since stories, after aU, should not be weighed like potatoes, I de¬ cided to relax the binding rules and give more attention to the general tenor of what the judges had to say. Thus the figures are omitted in this year’s anthology, and yet the decisions are as interesting and as just as in other years. We won a unani¬ mous decision for first place, which was lucky; beyond that two of our judges, with sUght reservations, voted almost alike, and I found it easy to reconcile the differences without calling on help from Washington. The judges acted on the stories contained in this book, which had been chosen with the help of professional readers from the thousands of stories printed annually in American magazines. THE SHORT-STORY SCENE We are still looking for great, or important, writing from the young writers who chose to interpret the economic scene, but so far our hopes have been disappointed. During 1936-37 the proletarian short story was even less visible than in the year preceding. This was partly brought about by the demise of many of the httle magazines, which died because the patience of the printer wore out when support was not forth¬ coming. A number of new writers appeared in the publications of the Federal Writers projects, but most of their work was not in fiction. Reportage and personal-experience stories were found as usual, but few of them suggested the presence of the selective talent which makes an author—a “ creative writer” as the advertisements put it—out of a reporter or social worker. In a year filled with intense political partisanship and vio¬ lent clashes between labor and capital, writers seemed to pre¬ fer themes not dictated by the events of our day. This is not remarkable, for it takes a certain length of time for events to become useful to a writer and comprehensible for a reader. INTRODUCTION IX They lie like a compost of leaves which gives the gardener op¬ portunity, several seasons after they fall, to germinate new plants out of the mold. Moreover, “escapist fiction,” contrary to the pronounce¬ ments of literary economists, is a real factor in giving tem¬ peramental balance to harassed society, and writing about topics remote from immediate concerns is one way of keeping individual sanity. Stories dealing with a remote past, or with characters that have human traits but do not wear our habits, invariably come at such a time. For several years historical fiction has been on the increase; there is also a premium on picaresque adventure, which suggests that the reader, hemmed in by restrictive measures and subjected to con¬ fiscatory taxation and invasions of individual privacy, enjoys reading about men who make their own destiny and elbow the world out of their way. A certain amount of good humor gets into these stories, replacing the sharp impact of the hard- boiled stories of recent years. Gangster stories went out with gang wars, and the hard-boiled manner, which may have re¬ flected the resentment easygoing Americans felt at the restrictions of the Prohibition era, is represented less and less in stories of our day. We have assimilated many styles and mannerisms in the last fifteen years; the short story has profited by experiment, but experiment is no longer uppermost. Miss Dorothy Brew¬ ster, assistant professor of English at Columbia, published during the year A Book of Contemporary Short Stories, in which she pointed out how thoroughly emphasis had been shifted from form to subject matter and spoke with high ap¬ proval of the “human values” in short stories. Edward J. O’Brien, in The Best Short Stories for igjy, expressed hope that authors and readers would consider the merits of the longer short story, or novella, “a story of sustained breath which accepts all the limitations of the short-story unities.” Both editors now profess increased interest in the sustained story, the complete story, rather than in fragments of mood or glimpses of a character without movement. The longer story may help authors to explore deeper into human character, for at present America excels in the story of action and sur¬ face conduct, and only a few authors search for the deeper implications. X INTRODUCTION First Prize: “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” by Stephen Vincent Benet. It is always a pleasure to record the unanimous choice of the judges for a story. In this case Stephen Vincent Benet’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster” was chosen by all three judges for first place. Mr Brickell said that it was not only the best of the collection in his judgment but quite obviously a classic. “Second and third readings convince me of its fine chance for as near an approach to immortality as a short story can attain,” he wrote. “It is t3q)icaUy American and typically New England, also a folk legend, but bom of one man’s imagination with excellent material.