[Footnote 6:  The National Letters, in Prejudices, second series, Knopf, N.Y., 1920.]

[Footnote 7:  April 24, 1920.]

“You have looked from the rear platform of the limited, across the widening distance, at a town passed a moment ago.  A flourishing city, according to the prospectus; a commonplace aggregation of architecture, you say; respectable middle-class homes; time-serving cottages built on the same plan; a heaven-seeking spire; perhaps a work of art in library or townhall.  You are rather glad that you have left it behind; rather certain that soon you will have rolled through another, its counterpart.

“But there may be hope, here, of sorts.  For a typical American town represents twentieth century life and development, just as current short stories reflect conditions.  If the writer failed to represent his age, to reflect its peculiar images, he would not serve it truly.”

It is significant that these words preceded by only a few months the publication of Sinclair Lewis’s “Main Street,” which illustrates in a big and popular way the point in question.  Work of satire that it is, it cannot but hold out a solution of the problem presented:  in the sweep of the land to the Rockies lies a “dominion which will rise to unexampled greatness when other empires have grown senile.”

America is young; its writers are young.  But they are reflecting the many-coloured, multiform life of America, in journalism and in art.  Quite naturally, they profit by all that has preceded them in other literatures.  Since their work stands rooted in romanticism it may legitimately heighten the effects and lights of everyday life.

A glance at the stories republished by the O. Henry Memorial Award Committee for 1920 will reveal their varied nature.  The genus Africanus is represented by “Black Art and Ambrose,” which has a close second in another on the list, “The Metamorphosis of High Yaller,” and a third in “The Ten-Share Horse” of E.K.  Means.  The tabulation reveals a number of cosmic types—­Jewish, Chinese, English, French, Irish, Italian, American.  The Chinese character is even more ubiquitous than in 1919, but the tales wherein he figures appear to the Committee to be the last drops in the bucket.  Two exceptions occur:  “Young China,” by Charles Caldwell Dobie, and “Widows and Orphans,” by Ellen La Motte.  The former knows San Francisco Chinatown, the latter is acquainted with the Oriental at home.  One of the Committee regards “The Daughter of the Bernsteins” as the best story of Jewish character.  Another sees in it a certain crudeness.  Its companions in the year were the tales of Bruno Lessing, Montague Glass, and—­in particular—­a story by Leon Kelley entitled “Speeches Ain’t Business” (Pictorial Review, July).

But this note on the list is a digression.  With regard to the stories reprinted, “The Last Room of All” illustrates old-world influence, surely, in its recountal of events in an age long past, the time of the Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia.  In its revival of old forms, old customs, it is a masquerade.  But behold that it is a gorgeous blood-coloured masquerade and that Cercamorte is a distinct portrait of the swash-buckler hero of those times.