100 Great Short Stories

A collection of short story masterpieces from the world's finest storytellers

150 Timeless Tales

The Gift of the Magi

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer...
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Gentlemen: The King!

The room was large, but with a low ceiling, and at one end of the lengthy, broad apartment stood a gigantic fireplace, in which was heaped a pile o...
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Dracula's Guest

When we started for our drive the sun was shining brightly on Munich, and the air was full of the joyousness of early summer. Just as we were about...
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The Mortal Immortal

JULY 16, 1833. --This is a memorable anniversary for me; on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year! The Wandering Jew?--certainly not...
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Political Economy

Political Economy is the basis of all good government. The wisest men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the-- [Here I was interrup...
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Man About Town

There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about a mystery. So I began to inquire. It took me two weeks to find out what w...
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My Uncle Jules

A white-haired old man begged us for alms. My companion, Joseph Davranche, gave him five francs. Noticing my surprised look, he said: "That poor un...
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Fur

"You look worried, dear," said Eleanor. "I am worried," admitted Suzanne; "not worried exactly, but anxious. You see, my birthday happens next week...
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The Fool-Killer

Down South whenever any one perpetrates some particularly monumental piece of foolishness everybody says: "Send for Jesse Holmes." Jesse Holmes is ...
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A Portrait

Hello! there's Milial!" said somebody near me. I looked at the man who had been pointed out as I had been wishing for a long time to meet this Don ...
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A Society

THIS IS HOW it all came about. Six or seven of us were sitting one day after tea. Some were gazing across the street into the windows of a milliner...
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Love of Life

"This out of all will remain - They have lived and have tossed: So much of the game will be gain, Though the gold of the dice has been lost." THEY ...
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The Last Spin

The boy sitting opposite him was his enemy. The boy sitting opposite him was called Tigo, and he wore a green silk jacket with an orange stripe on ...
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Absent Treatment

I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It's a most interesting story. I can't put in any literary style and all that; but I don't hav...
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Jack London

I was born in San Francisco in 1876. At fifteen I was a man among men, and if I had a spare nickel I spent it on beer instead of candy, because I t...
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No Story

To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper story. You wi...
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Springtime a la Carte

It was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry a...
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A Love-Knot

Mr. Nathaniel Clark and Mrs. Bowman had just finished their third game of draughts. It had been a difficult game for Mr. Clark, the lady's mind hav...
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Blind Man's Holiday

Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise ...
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Jessamine

When the vegetable-man knocked, Jessamine went to the door wearily. She felt quite well acquainted with him. He had been coming all the spring, and...
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Sir Philip Sidney

A cruel battle was being fought. The ground was covered with dead and dying men. The air was hot and stifling. The sun shone down without pity on t...
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All Gold Canyon

It was the green heart of the canyon, where the walls swerved back from the rigid plan and relieved their harshness of line by making a little shel...
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A New Pathology

It has long been vaguely understood that the condition of a man's clothes has a certain effect upon the health of both body and mind. The well-know...
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The Kiss

AT eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six batteries of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the night in the vi...
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The Beautiful Suit

There was once a little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of clothes. It was green and gold, and woven so that I cannot describe how delic...
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Just Meat

He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting street, but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps at the ...
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A Horse Story

Herminia, mounted upon a dejected looking sorrel pony, was climbing the gradual slope of a pine hill one morning in summer. She was a ‘Cadian girl ...
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Coco

Throughout the whole countryside the Lucas farm, was known as "the Manor." No one knew why. The peasants doubtless attached to this word, "Manor," ...
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A Son of the Gods

A Study in the Present Tense A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An open country to right and left and forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this...
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A New Crime

LEGISLATION NEEDED This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there i...
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White Magic

One September afternoon in the year of grace 1840 Avery and Janet Sparhallow were picking apples in their Uncle Daniel Sparhallow's big orchard. It...
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Grisha

GRISHA, a chubby little boy, born two years and eight months ago, is walking on the boulevard with his nurse. He is wearing a long, wadded pelisse,...
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At Twilight

A breeze from the May world without blew through the class-room, and as it lifted his papers he had a curious sense of freshness and mustiness meet...
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The $25,000 Jaw

"Rather thirsty this morning, eh, Mr. Addicks?" inquired Cowdin, the chief purchasing agent. The "Mister" was said with a long, hissing "s" and was...
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The Bishop

ITHE evening service was being celebrated on the eve of Palm Sunday in the Old Petrovsky Convent. When they began distributing the palm it was clos...
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Cupid's Arrows

Pit where the buffalo cooled his hide,By the hot sun emptied, and blistered and dried;Log in the reh-grass, hidden and alone;Bund where the earth-r...
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The Science vs Luck

[Written about 1867.] At that time, in Kentucky (said the Hon. Mr. K-----); the law was very strict against what is termed "games of chance." About...
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The Black Monk

I ANDREY VASSILITCH KOVRIN, who held a master's degree at the University, had exhausted himself, and had upset his nerves. He did not send for a do...
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The Man In A Case

AT the furthest end of the village of Mironositskoe some belated sportsmen lodged for the night in the elder Prokofy's barn. There were two of them...
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Laura

"You are not really dying, are you?" asked Amanda. "I have the doctor's permission to live till Tuesday," said Laura. "But to-day is Saturday; this...
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The Aged Mother

Long, long ago there lived at the foot of the mountain a poor farmer and his aged, widowed mother. They owned a bit of land which supplied them wit...
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The Monkey's Paw

"Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it." -- Anonymous Part I Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnum v...
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The Necklace

The girl was one of those pretty and charming young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no ...
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An Angel in Disguise

Idleness, vice, and intemperance had done their miserable work, and the dead mother lay cold and still amid her wretched children. She had fallen u...
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Neighbors

PYOTR MIHALITCH IVASHIN was very much out of humour: his sister, a young girl, had gone away to live with Vlassitch, a married man. To shake off th...
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Chickamauga

One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of...
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Berenice

Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum forelevatas. - Ebn Zaiat . MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of e...
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About Love

AT lunch next day there were very nice pies, crayfish, and mutton cutlets; and while we were eating, Nikanor, the cook, came up to ask what the vis...
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The Gray Hare

A gray hare lived during the winter near a village. When night came, he would prick up one ear and listen, then he would prick up the other, jerk h...
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Merry Christmas

"MY DEAR Young Friend," said Father Time, as he laid his hand gently upon my shoulder, "you are entirely wrong." Then I looked up over my shoulder ...
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Good Souls

All about us, living in our families, it may be, there exists a race of curious creatures. Outwardly, they possess no marked peculiarities; in fact...
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An Idle Fellow

I am tired. At the end of these years I am very tired. I have been studying in books the languages of the living and those we call dead. Early in t...
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My Bloody Massacre

The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon the financial expedients of "cooking dividends," a thing which became shamefully fre...
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Keeping Watch

"Human natur'!" said the night-watchman, gazing fixedly at a pretty girl in a passing waterman's skiff. "Human natur'!" He sighed, and, striking a ...
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The Eyes Have It

A little whimsy, now and then, makes for good balance. Theoretically, you could find this type of humor anywhere. But only a topflight science-fict...
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Hop-Frog

I NEVER knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind, and to tel...
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Cornelia's Jewels

It was a bright morning in the old city of Rome many hundred years ago. In a vine-covered summer-house in a beautiful garden, two boys were standin...
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A Helpless Situation

Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that never materially changes, in form and substance, yet I cannot get used to ...
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A Bank Fraud

He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse; He purchased raiment and forebore to pay;He struck a trusting junior with a horse, And won Gymkha...
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Dagon

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which...
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The Cripple

The following adventure happened to me about 1882. I had just taken the train and settled down in a corner, hoping that I should be left alone, whe...
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Brown Wolf

SHE had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on her overshoes, and when she emerged from the house found her waiting husband abso...
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A Family Affair

The moment that the wagon rattled out of the yard away to the station, Madame Solisainte settled herself into a state of nervous expectancy. She wa...
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A Joke

IT was a bright winter midday. . . . There was a sharp snapping frost and the curls on Nadenka's temples and the down on her upper lip were covered...
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The Blue Hotel

I THE Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its positio...
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An Arrest

Having murdered his brother-in-law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a fugitive from justice. From the county jail where he had been confined to await ...
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Alexandre

At four o'clock that day, as on every other day, Alexandre rolled the three-wheeled chair for cripples up to the door of the little house; then, in...
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A School Story

Two men in a smoking-room were talking of their private-school days. ‘At our school,’ said A., ‘we had a ghost’s footmark on the staircase. What wa...
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