The short story is to-day our most common literary product. It is read by everyone. Not every boy or girl will read novels after leaving school, but every boy or girl is certain to read short stories. It is important in the high school to guide taste and appreciation in short story reading, so that the reading of days when school life is over will be healthful and upbuilding. Here is a collection that is entirely modern. The authors represented are among the leading authors of the day, the stories are principally stories of present-day life, the themes are themes of present-day thought. The students who read this book will be more awake to the present, and will be better citizens of to-day. The great number of stories presented has given opportunity to illustrate different types of short story writing: Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle Edgar Allan Poe: The Murders In The Rue Morgue Fyodor Dostoevsky: Notes From The Underground Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis Charles Dickens: The Chimes Ivan Turgenev: Mumu Francis Scott Fitzgerald: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button Joseph Conrad: Heart Of Darkness Ambrose Bierce: Chickamauga Arthur Conan Doyle: A Study In Scarlet H. P. Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness Nathaniel Hawthorne: Roger Malvin's Burial Guy de Maupassant: Necklace Leo Tolstoy: God Sees The Truth, But Waits Anton Chekhov: The Lottery Ticket Virginia Woolf: The Mark On The Wall Katherine Mansfield: The Garden Party H.G. Wells: The Star Stendhal: Vanina Vanini Honoré De Balzac: The Unknown Masterpiece Mark Twain: The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County Aldous Huxley: Crome Yellow Ernest Hemingway: Up In Michigan Nikolay Gogol: A May Night O. Henry: The Ransom Of Red Chief Jack London: To Build a Fire