Louisa May Alcott - The Best American Short Stories

Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Jack London, O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Herman Melville, Kate Chopin, Stephen Crane, Bret Harte, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Louisa May Alcott, Charles W. Chesnutt, William Faulkner, Theodore Dreiser

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The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (Mark Twain)

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (Mark Twain)

To Build a Fire (Jack London)

A Piece of Steak (Jack London)

An Odyssey of the North (Jack London)

The Gift of the Magi (O. Henry)

The Ransom of Red Chief (O. Henry)

The Cop and the Anthem (O. Henry)

A Retrieved Reformation (O. Henry)

The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Allan Poe)

The Tell-Tale Heart (Edgar Allan Poe)

The Pit and the Pendulum (Edgar Allan Poe)

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Edgar Allan Poe)

The Black Cat (Edgar Allan Poe)

The Birthmark (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Rappacini’s Daughter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Rip Van Winkle (Washington Irving)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving)

The Call of Cthulhu (H. P. Lovecraft)

At the Mountains of Madness (H. P. Lovecraft)

The Shadow over Innsmouth (H. P. Lovecraft)

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Ambrose Bierce)

Chickamauga (Ambrose Bierce)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Bernice Bobs Her Hair (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

The Turn of the Screw (Henry James)

Daisy Miller – A Study (Henry James)

Bartleby the Scrivener (Herman Melville)

Benito Cereno (Herman Melville)

Desiree’s Baby (Kate Chopin)

The Open Boat (Stephen Crane)

The Luck of Roaring Camp (Bret Harte)

A White Heron (Sarah Orne Jewett)

The Revolt of ‘Mother’ (Mary Wilkins Freeman)

The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

Christmas Every Day (William Dean Howells)

Ethan Frome (Edith Wharton)

Paul’s Case (Willa Cather)

The Abbot's Ghost (Louisa May Alcott)

The Wife of His Youth (Charles W. Chesnutt)

Barn Burning (William Faulkner)

The Lost Phoebe (Theodore Dreiser)

Indian Camp (Ernest Hemingway)

Soldier's Home (Ernest Hemingway)

Big Two-Hearted River (Ernest Hemingway)

The Willow Walk (Sinclair Lewis)

An Angel in Disguise (T. S. Arthur)

A Dark-Brown Dog (Stephen Crane)

The Story of an Hour (Kate Chopin)

On the Gull's Road (Willa Cather)

Scarlet Stockings (Louisa May Alcott)

Table of Contents

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.

I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leo nidas W. Smiley—Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley—a young minister of the Gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him.

Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired its two heroes as men of transcendant genius in finesse. To me, the spectacle of a man drifting serenely along through such a queer yarn without ever smiling, was exquisitely absurd. As I said before, I asked him to tell me what he knew of Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and he replied as follows. I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once:

There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49—or may be it was the spring of '50—I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp; but any way, he was the curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides. Anyway that suited the other man would suit him—anyway just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied. But still he was lucky, uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner. He was always ready and laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take any side you please, as I was just telling you. If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush, or you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar, to bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to him—he would bet on any thing— the dangdest feller. Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked how she was, and he said she was considerable better—thank the Lord for his inf'nit mercy—and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of Prov'dence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says, "Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half that she don't, anyway."

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare—the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag, but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster than that—and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust and raising more racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose—and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near as you could cypher it down.