Short Story Classics (American)   By: William Patten (1868-1936)

EDITED BY WILLIAM PATTEN

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

P. F. COLLIER & SON NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY P. F. COLLIER & SON The use of the copyrighted stories in this collection has been authorized in every instance by the authors or their representatives.

CONTENTS VOLUME II

THE BRIGADE COMMANDER J. W. DEFOREST

WHO WAS SHE? BAYARD TAYLOR

MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

BROTHER SEBASTIAN'S FRIENDSHIP HAROLD FREDERIC

A GOOD FOR NOTHING HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN

THE IDYL OF RED GULCH BRET HARTE

CRUTCH, THE PAGE GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND ("GATH")

IN EACH OTHER'S SHOES GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP

THE DENVER EXPRESS A. A. HAYES

JAUNE D'ANTIMOINE THOMAS ALLIBONE JANVIER

OLE 'STRACTED THOMAS NELSON PAGE

OUR CONSUL AT CARLSRUHE F. J. STIMSON ("J. S. OF DALE")

THE BRIGADE COMMANDER BY J. W. DE FOREST

John William De Forest (born March 36, 1826, in Seymour, Ct.) at the outbreak of the Rebellion abandoned a promising career as a historian and writer of books of travel to enlist in the Union army. He served throughout the entire war, first as captain, then as major, and so acquired a thorough knowledge of military tactics and the psychology of our war which enabled him, on his return to civil life, to write the best war stories of his generation. Of these "The Brigade Commander" is Mr. De Forest's masterpiece. Solidly grounded on experience, and drawing its emotive power from our greatest national cataclysm, like a Niagara dynamo the story sends us a thrill undiminishing with the increasing distance of its source.

THE BRIGADE COMMANDER BY J. W. DEFOREST [Footnote: By permission of "The New York Times."]

The Colonel was the idol of his bragging old regiment and of the bragging brigade which for the last six months he had commanded. He was the idol, not because he was good and gracious, not because he spared his soldiers or treated them as fellow citizens, but because he had led them to victory and made them famous. If a man will win battles and give his brigade a right to brag loudly of its doings, he may have its admiration and even its enthusiastic devotion, though he be as pitiless and as wicked as Lucifer.

"It's nothin' to me what the Currnell is in prrivit, so long as he shows us how to whack the rrebs," said Major Gahogan, commandant of the "Old Tenth." "Moses saw God in the burrnin' bussh, an' bowed down to it, an' worrshipt it. It wasn't the bussh he worrshipt; it was his God that was in it. An' I worr ship this villin of a Currnell (if he is a villin) because he's almighty and gives us the vict'ry. He's nothin' but a human burrnin' bussh, perhaps, but he's got the god of war in urn. Adjetant Wallis, it's a long time between dhrinks, as I think ye was sayin', an' with rayson. See if ye can't confiscate a canteen of whiskee somewhere in the camp. Bedad, if I can't buy it I'll stale it. We're goin' to fight tomorry, an' it may be it's the last chance we'll have for a dhrink, unless there's more lik'r now in the other worrld than Dives got."