_The Necklace_, Guy de Maupassant.
_A Solitary_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
_The Lady or the Tiger_, Frank R. Stockton.
_The Strange Ride_, Rudyard Kipling.
_Rikki-Tikki-Tavi_, Rudyard Kipling.
_They_, Rudyard Kipling.
_The Twelfth Guest_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
_The Shadows on the Wall_, Mary Wilkins Freeman.
ETHAN BRAND[1]
A Chapter From An Abortive Romance
_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)_
Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with
charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son
played at building houses with the scattered fragments of marble,
when, on the hillside below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of
the forest.
"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and
pressing betwixt his father's knees.
"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some
merry fellow from the bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh
loud enough within doors lest he should blow the roof of the house
off. So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock."
"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse,
middle-aged clown, "he does not laugh like a man that is glad. So the
noise frightens me!"
"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly.
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