100 Great Short Stories

A Traveler had hired an Ass to carry him to a distant part of the country. The owner of the Ass went with the Traveler, walking beside him to drive...

A certain man fell ill, and, being in a very bad way, he made a vow that he would sacrifice a hundred oxen to the gods if they would grant him a...

A cast-iron fence, A bed of pine, How sweet that I no longer Need to be jealous. A bed's made for me With sobbing and prayer; Now go wherever on...

My heart was chilled and numb, But my feet were light. I fumbled the glove for my left hand Onto my right. It seemed there were many steps, I knew –...

A MODERN CINDERELLA OR, THE LITTLE OLD SHOE HOW IT WAS LOST Among green New England hills stood an ancient house, many-gabled, mossy-roofed, and...

Hush! Hush! Hush! Come closer to me. Look into my eyes! I always was a fascinating creature, tender, sensitive, and grateful. I was wise and I was...

Chapter I "Jane, how can you tolerate that dull, spiritless creature? I never sat by his side for five minutes, without getting sleepy." "He does not...

There was a man named Cin-cin-na´tus who lived on a little farm not far from the city of Rome. He had once been rich, and had held the highest office...

The Abbey of Poissy has been rendered famous by old authors as a place of pleasure, where the misconduct of the nuns first began, and whence...

Prince Lotarno rose slowly to his feet, casting one malignant glance at the prisoner before him. "You have heard," he said, "what is alleged against...

Soon they have to die, but there is no sign of it in cicadas’ cries.

To the south of where the road between Leesville and Hardy, in the State of Missouri, crosses the east fork of May Creek stands an abandoned house....

    The seraph sings before the manifest     God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,...

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs No school of long experience, that the world Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen Enough of...

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die. I have sent up my gladness on wings, to be lost in the blue of the sky. I have run and...

THE Professor received a telegram from the Lyalikovs' factory; he was asked to come as quickly as possible. The daughter of some Madame Lyalikov,...

A COUNTRY village wrapped in the darkness of night. One o'clock strikes from the belfry. Two lawyers, called Kozyavkin and Laev, both in the best of...

I HAVE seen a great many houses in my time, little and big, new and old, built of stone and of wood, but of one house I have kept a very vivid...

One, two, three, four, five. There were five of them. Five couriers, sitting on a bench outside the convent on the summit of the Great St. Bernard in...

WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,  A pregnant bank swell'd up, to rest The violet's reclining head,  Sat we two, one another's best. Our hands...

A SENTIMENTAL STORY FROM THE DIARY OF A DREAMER FIRST NIGHT It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear...

I had called upon my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, one day in the autumn of last year and found him in deep conversation with a very stout,...

'Mid my gold-brown curls There twined a silver hair: I plucked it idly out And scarcely knew 'twas there. Coiled in my velvet sleeve it lay And like...

"I don't know what we're goin' to do," said Aunt Maria Crooker. She sat in a large arm-chair, and held in her lap a bowl of sugar and butter that she...

Letitia lived in the same house where her grandmother and her great-grandmother had lived and died. Her own parents died when she was very young, and...

A STRANGER came to the door at eve, And he spoke the bridegroom fair. He bore a green-white stick in his hand, And, for all burden, care. He asked...

IT is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I...

PART I Nowhere did so many people pause as before the little picture-shop in the Shtchukinui Dvor. This little shop contained, indeed, the most...

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, And Jack jump over the candle stick. In Denslow's version, Jack is a dog

Three women were changed into flowers which grew in the field, but one of them was allowed to be in her own home at night. Then once when day was...

There was once a very old man, whose eyes had become dim, his ears dull of hearing, his knees trembled, and when he sat at table he could hardly hold...

There were once on a time a king and a queen who lived happily together and had twelve children, but they were all boys. Then said the King to his...

I been a having some hard traveling I thought you knowed I been a having some hard traveling Way Down the road I been a having some hard traveling...

A MORALITY. What is guilt? A stain upon the soul. And it is a point of vast interest whether the soul may contract such stains in all their depth and...

A porcupine skin, Stiff with bad tanning, It must have ended somewhere. Stuffed horned owl Pompous Yellow eyed; Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig...

Maera lay still, his head on his arms, his face in the sand. He felt warm and sticky from the bleeding. Each time he felt the horn coming. Sometimes...

Robbins, reporter for the /Picayune/, and Dumars, of /L'Abeille/--the old French newspaper that has buzzed for nearly a century--were good friends,...

"As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had much confidence in the perfidiousness of woman. As partners or coeducators in the most...

Mysteries follow one another so closely in a great city that the reading public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel at his...

    When lads were home from labour     At Abdon under Clee,     A man would call his...

    The fairies break their dances     And leave the printed lawn,     And up from India...

La vieuville was suddenly cut short by a cry of despair, and a the same time a noise was heard wholly unlike any other sound. The cry and sounds came...

THE scene is a conservatory. Luxuriant tropical plants are seen looming through a greenish aquarium twilight, punctuated here and there by the...

    Brother belov'd if health shall smile again,     Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek:...

"The Manner of Men" - St. Paul "Limits and Renewals" (1932) I am made all things to all men, Hebrew, Roman, and Greek, In each one's tongue I speal,...

Kabul town's by Kabul river, Blow the trumpet, draw the sword, There I lef' my mate for ever, Wet an' drippin' by the ford. Ford, ford, ford o' Kabul...

You may talk o' gin and beer When you're quartered safe out 'ere, An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it; But when it comes to slaughter...

The God of Fair Beginnings Hath prospered here my hand, The cargoes of my lading, And the keels of my command. For out of many ventures That sailed...

The least that Findlayson, of the Public Works Department, expected was a C.I.E.; he dreamed of a C.S.I. Indeed, his friends told him that he...

Blessed was our first age and morning-time. Then were no waies tarren, ne no cars numberen, but each followed his owne playinge-busyness to go about...

Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid, He to the overbearing Boanerges Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor, Blessed be the vintage!)...

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might, There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night. They had neither...

Where the East wind is brewed fresh and fresh every morning, And the balmy night-breezes blow straight from the Pole, I heard a Destroyer sing: "What...

... At the close of a winter day, Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay; And one was Admiral of the North from Solway...

I No--I ain't signed for next year; but there won't be no trouble about that. The dough part of it is all fixed up. John and me talked it over and...

Scholars Say He is the Only American Myth. Paul Bunyan is the hero of lumbercamp whoppers that have been handed down for generations. These stories,...

Illustrious fathers of the human race, Of you, the song of your afflicted sons Will chant the praise; of you, more dear, by far, Unto the Great...

    I.     Solemnly, mournfully,         Dealing its dole,...

    DEDICATION     TO G.W.G.     With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,...

Writing on what my doctor tells me is my deathbed, my most hideous fear is that the man is wrong. I suppose I shall seem to be buried next week, but…...

When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams. Prior to that time he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightly...

May 8. What a lovely day! I have spent all the morning lying on the grass in front of my house, under the enormous plantain tree which covers and...

In placid hours well-pleased we dream Of many a brave unbodied scheme. But form to lend, pulsed life create, What unlike things must meet and mate: A...

I knew quite well why Father sent me to Prince Edward Island to visit Aunt Philippa that summer. He told me he was sending me there "to learn some...

Sir Lulworth Quayne was making a leisurely progress through the Zoological Society's Gardens in company with his nephew, recently returned from...

One night, after the adventure above described, the Khaleefeh Hároon Er-Rasheed said to Jaạfar, his Wezeer, We will go down to-night into the city,...

THE first time one looked at Elsbeth, one was not prepossessed. She was thin and brown, her nose turned slightly upward, her toes went in just a...

From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the...

A Farmyard Tale for Ralph and Betsy What a funny sight it is to see a brood of ducklings with a hen! Listen to the story of Jemima Puddle-duck, who...

Come, or the stellar tide will slip away, Eastward avoid the hour of its decline, Now! for the needle trembles in my soul! Here have we had our...

  While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played about the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing...

Early last Fall there died in Troy an old man and his wife. The woman went first, and the husband took a chill at her grave's edge, when he stood...

"Jack, she played with me deliberately, heartlessly. I can never forgive her." "In that case, Will, I congratulate you. Such a girl isn't worth a...

Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend, Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy? Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend, And being frank she lends...

I AND, like a dying lady lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of...

Smooth it slides upon its travel, Here a wimple, there a gleam— O the clean gravel! O the smooth stream! Sailing blossoms, silver fishes, Paven pools...

Pity me not because the light of day At close of day no longer walks the sky; Pity me not for beauties passed away From field and thicket as the year...

"Thin Rain, whom are you haunting, That you haunt my door?" —Surely it is not I she's wanting; Someone living here before— "Nobody's in the house but...

Remember me as I was then; Turn from me now, but always see The laughing shadowy girl who stood At midnight by the flowering tree, With eyes that...

Fields beneath a quilt of snow From which the rocks and stubble sleep, And in the west a shy white star That shivers as it wakes from deep. The...

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of...

When they see my songs They will sigh and say, "Poor soul, wistful soul, Lonely night and day." They will never know All your love for me Surer than...

Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swoon'd nor utter'd cry: All her maidens, watching, said, "She must weep or she will die." Then they...

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream! To dream and dream, like yonder...

Fair is her cottage in its place, Where yon broad water sweetly, slowly glides. It sees itself from thatch to base Dream in the sliding tides. And...

‘Whither, O whither, love, shall we go, For a score of sweet little summers or so?’ The sweet little wife of the singer said, On the day that...

It is the miller's daughter, And she is grown so dear, so dear, That I would be the jewel That trembles in her ear: For hid in ringlets day and...

I. O well for him whose will is strong! He suffers, but he will not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong: For him nor moves the loud...

At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's reign, when I was a boy at a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, I remember the wiseacre of...

AN HOUR, possibly, passed after a rush of water licked off the other two and left them alone, before Tim Bell, cowering in the shelter of Larsen's...

Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under peculiarly...

Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt here...

The chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled at Camberwell, and kept the electric railway going, came out of Yorkshire, and his...

I Stilling, that night after dinner, had surpassed himself. He always did, Wrayford reflected, when the small fry from Highfield came to dine. He,...

In the smoking-room of the club-house a cheerful fire was burning, and the Oldest Member glanced from time to time out of the window into the...

Now that it's all over, I may as well admit that there was a time during the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought that Jeeves was...

Eve Hendrie sat up in bed. For two hours she had been trying to get to sleep, but without success. Never in her life had she felt more wakeful. There...

The young man came into the smoking-room of the clubhouse, and flung his bag with a clatter on the floor. He sank moodily into an arm-chair and...

The main difficulty in writing a story is to convey to the reader clearly yet tersely the natures and dispositions of one's leading characters....

Any man under thirty years of age who tells you he is not afraid of an English butler lies. He may not show his fear. Outwardly he may be...

Mac's Restaurant--nobody calls it MacFarland's--is a mystery. It is off the beaten track. It is not smart. It does not advertise. It provides nothing...

Although this story is concerned principally with the Man and the Maid, the Miasma pervades it to such an extent that I feel justified in putting his...

There were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham's attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it had been...

It was Harold who first made us acquainted, when I was dining one night at the Cafe Britannique, in Soho. It is a peculiarity of the Cafe Britannique...

The young man came into the club-house. There was a frown on his usually cheerful face, and he ordered a ginger-ale in the sort of voice which an...

Well-meaning chappies at the club sometimes amble up to me and tap me on the wishbone, and say "Reggie, old top,"--my name's Reggie Pepper--"you...

In the crowd that strolled on the Promenade des Etrangers, enjoying the morning sunshine, there were some who had come to Roville for their health,...

Once upon a time there was erected in Longacre Square, New York, a large white statue, labelled 'Our City', the figure of a woman in Grecian robes...

This story will interest and amuse all cricketers, and while from the male point of view it may serve as a good illustration of the fickleness of...

It is possible that, at about the time at which this story opens, you may have gone into the Hotel Belvoir for a hair-cut. Many people did; for the...

"Sylvia!" "Yes, papa." "That infernal dog of yours----" "Oh, papa!" "Yes, that infernal dog of yours has been at my carnations again!" Colonel...

When Jack Wilton first came to Marois Bay, none of us dreamed that he was a man with a hidden sorrow in his life. There was something about the man...

Tub had been waiting for an hour in the falling snow. He paced the sidewalk to keep warm and stuck his head out over the curb whenever he saw lights...

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a ghostly...

SUCH AN EXPRESSION of unhappiness was enough by itself to make one's eyes slide above the paper's edge to the poor woman's face, insignificant...

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's...

GREEN THE POINTED FINGERS of glass hang downwards. The light slides down the glass, and drops a pool of green. All day long the ten fingers of the...

FROM THE OVAL-SHAPED flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at...

[Photo by Chris Harshaw, Tricolor heron fishing, 2008] LAZY AND INDIFFERENT, shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his way, the heron passes...

PERHAPS IT WAS the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary...

WELL, HERE WE are, and if you cast your eye over the room you will see that Tubes and trams and omnibuses, private carriages not a few, even, I...

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study...

FOUR YEARS 1887-1891. At the end of the eighties my father and mother, my brother and sisters and myself, all newly arrived from Dublin, were settled...

It was travelling northward Hanrahan was one time, giving a hand to a farmer now and again in the hurried time of the year, and telling his stories...

It was in the month of June Hanrahan was on the road near Sligo, but he did not go into the town, but turned towards Beinn Bulben; for there were...

I Now that we're almost settled in our house I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us Beside a fire of turf in th' ancient tower, And having...

Costello had come up from the fields and lay upon the ground before the door of his square tower, resting his head upon his hands and looking at the...

One winter evening an old knight in rusted chain-armour rode slowly along the woody southern slope of Ben Bulben, watching the sun go down in crimson...

Hanrahan, the hedge schoolmaster, a tall, strong, red-haired young man, came into the barn where some of the men of the village were sitting on...

O blessed and happy he, who knowing the mysteries of the gods, sanctifies his life, and purifies his soul, celebrating orgies in the mountains with...

Hands, do what you’re bid; Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed.

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for...

    My mother dandled me and sang,     ‘How young it is, how young!’     And made a...

‘Although I’d lie lapped up in linen A deal I’d sweat and little earn If I should live as live the neighbours,’ Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne;...

In an air-shaft so narrow that you could touch the next wall with your bare hands, Hanneh Breineh leaned out and knocked on her neighbor’s window....