Shapes that Haunt the Dusk Harper's Novelettes EDITED BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS AND HENRY MILLS ALDEN Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London

GEORG SCHOCK THE CHRISTMAS CHILD

RICHARD RICE THE WHITE SLEEP OF AUBER HURN

HOWARD PYLE IN TENEBRAS

MADELENE YALE WYNNE THE LITTLE ROOM

HARRIET LEWIS BRADLEY THE BRINGING OF THE ROSE

HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE PERDITA

M. E. M. DAVIS AT LA GLORIEUSE

F. D. MILLET A FADED SCAPULAR

E. LEVI BROWN AT THE HERMITAGE

H. W. McVICKAR THE REPRISAL

[Pg v]

Introduction

The writers of American short stories, the best short stories in theworld, surpass in nothing so much as in their handling of those filmytextures which clothe the vague shapes of the borderland betweenexperience and illusion. This is perhaps because our people, who seem tolive only in the most tangible things of material existence, really livemore in the spirit than any other. Their love of the supernatural istheir common inheritance from no particular ancestry, but is apparentlyan effect from psychological influences in the past, widely separated intime and place. It is as noticeable among our Southerners of French raceas among our New-Englanders deriving from Puritan zealots accustomed towonder-working providences, or among those descendants of the German[Pg vi]immigrants who brought with them to our Middle States the superstitionsof the Rhine valleys or the Hartz Mountains. It is something that hastinged the nature of our whole life, whatever its varied sources, andwhen its color seems gone out of us, or, going, it renews itself in allthe mystical lights and shadows so familiar to us that, till we readsome such tales as those grouped together here, we are scarcely awar

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