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A Carnival Jangle
USA
There is a merry jangle of bells in the air, an all-pervading sense of jester’s noise, and the flaunting vividness of royal colours. The streets swarm with humanity,–humanity in all shapes, manners, forms, laughing, pushing, jostling,...
A Carnival Jangle
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
4 min
Violets
USA
I. “And she tied a bunch of violets with a tress of her pretty brown hair.” She sat in the yellow glow of the lamplight softly humming these words. It was Easter evening, and the newly...
Violets
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
2 min
Little Miss Sophie
USA
When Miss Sophie knew consciousness again, the long, faint, swelling notes of the organ were dying away in distant echoes through the great arches of the silent church, and she was alone, crouching in a little,...
Little Miss Sophie
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
9 min
Sister Josepha
USA
Sister Josepha told her beads mechanically, her fingers numb with the accustomed exercise. The little organ creaked a dismal “O Salutaris,” and she still knelt on the floor, her white-bonneted head nodding suspiciously. The Mother Superior...
Sister Josepha
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
9 min
The Goophered Grapevine
USA
Some years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honesty I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate. I shared, from an unprofessional standpoint, his opinion that...
The Goophered Grapevine
Charles W. Chesnutt
22 min
Mars Jeems’s Nightmare
USA
We found old Julius very useful when we moved to our new residence. He had a thorough knowledge of the neighborhood, was familiar with the roads and the watercourses, knew the qualities of the various soils...
Mars Jeems’s Nightmare
Charles W. Chesnutt
25 min
The Wife of His Youth
USA
I Mr. Ryder was going to give a ball. There were several reasons why this was an opportune time for such an event. Mr. Ryder might aptly be called the dean of the Blue Veins. The...
The Wife of His Youth
Charles W. Chesnutt
18 min
The Passing of Grandison
USA
I When it is said that it was done to please a woman, there ought perhaps to be enough said to explain anything; for what a man will not do to please a woman is yet...
The Passing of Grandison
Charles W. Chesnutt
26 min
A Predicament
USA
What chance, good lady, hath bereft you thus?—COMUS. It was a quiet and still afternoon when I strolled forth in the goodly city of Edina. The confusion and bustle in the streets were terrible. Men were...
A Predicament
Edgar Allan Poe
14 min
How I Went Out to Service
USA
When I was eighteen I wanted something to do. I had tried teaching for two years, and hated it; I had tried sewing, and could not earn my bread in that way, at the cost of...
How I Went Out to Service
Louisa May Alcott
23 min
The Brothers
USA
Doctor Franck came in as I sat sewing up the rents in an old shirt, that Tom might go tidily to his grave. New shirts were needed for the living, and there was not wife or...
The Brothers
Louisa May Alcott
33 min
Of the Coming of John
USA
Carlisle Street runs westward from the centre of Johnstown, across a great black bridge, down a hill and up again, by little shops and meat–markets, past single–storied homes, until suddenly it stops against a wide green...
Of the Coming of John
W. E. B. Du Bois
23 min
The Comet
USA
He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world—...
The Comet
W. E. B. Du Bois
20 min
Princess Steel
USA
“It is perfectly clear,” said my wife, pointing to the sign on the door. “It is perfectly absurd,” I answered and yet there it stood written: “Prof Johnson, Laboratory in Sociology. Hours 9 until 3.” We...
Princess Steel
W. E. B. Du Bois
19 min
The Shadowy Third
USA
When the call came I remember that I turned from the tele- phone in a romantic flutter. Though I had spoken only once to the great surgeon, Roland Maradick, I felt on that December afternoon that...
The Shadowy Third
Ellen Glasgow
39 min
The Past
USA
I had no sooner entered the house than I knew something was wrong. Though I had never been in so splendid a place before—it was one of those big houses just off Fifth Avenue—I had a...
The Past
Ellen Glasgow
39 min
A Couple Of Nuts
USA
The summer of 1924 shriveled the trees in the Champs-Elysees to a misty blue till they swayed before your eyes as if they were about to go down under the gasoline fumes. Before July was out,...
A Couple Of Nuts
Zelda Fitzgerald
19 min
Miss Ella
USA
Bitter things dried behind the eyes of Miss Ella like garlic on a string before an open fire. The acrid fumes of sweet memories had gradually reddened their rims until at times they shone like the...
Miss Ella
Zelda Fitzgerald
11 min
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean,...
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
F. Scott Fitzgerald
35 min
Hills Like White Elephants
USA
The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against...
Hills Like White Elephants
Ernest Hemingway
5 min
In Another Country
USA
In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came...
In Another Country
Ernest Hemingway
8 min
The Killers
USA
The door of Henry’s lunchroom opened and two men came in. They sat down at the counter. “What’s yours?” George asked them. “I don’t know,” one of the men said. “What do you want to eat,...
The Killers
Ernest Hemingway
11 min
The Unnatural Mother
USA
“Don’t tell me!” said old Mis’ Briggs, with a forbidding shake of the head; “no mother that was a mother would desert her own child for anything on earth!” “And leaving it a care on the...
The Unnatural Mother
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
12 min
Five Girls
USA
“There won’t be many more such good times as these for us,” said Olive Sargent, mournfully hugging her knees as she sat on the floor under the big Victory; “we’ve got to go out into the...
Five Girls
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
5 min
The Gilded Six-Bits
USA
It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G. and G. Fertilizer works for its support.   But there was something happy about the...
The Gilded Six-Bits
Zora Neale Hurston
18 min
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
USA
Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai “Ngàje Ngài,” the House of God. Close to the western...
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Ernest Hemingway
36 min
Spunk
USA
A giant of a brown-skinned man sauntered up the one street of the Village and out into the palmetto thickets with a small pretty woman clinging lovingly to his arm. “Looka theah, folkses!” cried Elijah Mosley,...
Spunk
Zora Neale Hurston
8 min
Sweat
USA
  It was eleven o’clock of a Spring night in Florida. It was Sunday. Any other night, Delia Jones would have been in bed for two hours by this time. But she was a wash-woman, and...
Sweat
Zora Neale Hurston
18 min
A Very Short Story
USA
One hot evening in Padua they carried him up onto the roof and he could look out over the top of the town. There were chimney swifts in the sky. After a while it got dark...
A Very Short Story
Ernest Hemingway
2 min
The Birthmark
USA
In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual...
The Birthmark
Nathaniel Hawthorne
25 min
Aquarium’s Most Wanted
USA
When I’m feeling down, I go for nighttime swims with the aquarium turtles. I was hired as a security guard because people keep trying to steal our very expensive penguins. In my opinion, the sea turtles...
Aquarium’s Most Wanted
Sophie Hoss
0 min
The Fig Leaf
USA
The nodes were like beetles, their black metal bodies shining between the attendant’s fingers. “Just a pinch, dear,” he said, leaning in and fixing the nodes to my temples, measuring symmetry with my eyes and his....
The Fig Leaf
Benjamin Shane Evans
6 min
For the Love of Goat
USA
The kid—they call him Spud—sees it while walking the mile to where he catches the school bus every morning except Thursdays when his mom pulls a shift at the school cafeteria and drives him there at...
For the Love of Goat
Clif Travers
14 min
Face
USA
Clemens hated doctors. When he came of age in the late ‘80s, they invariably made him feel worse—even the ones whose off-the-cuff diagnoses and hair-trigger antibiotic prescriptions made him, physically, better. They’d ugly-eye his hacking coughs...
Face
Douglas Silver
30 min
Cuddlebug
USA
8:44 am Tuesday greets me with pale golden light, singing the song of the morning, the song of opportunity. I rise from my bed without using the snooze button even once, ready to meet the promise...
Cuddlebug
Jenna-Marie Warnecke
25 min
Wants
USA
I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said,...
Wants
Grace Paley
3 min
The Wrong Man
USA
The room blazed with color. It seemed that the gorgeous things which the women were wearing had for this once managed to subdue the strident tones of the inevitable black and white of the men’s costumes....
The Wrong Man
Nella Larsen
6 min
Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven
USA
The Shackleford house was haunted. In the skittering of leaves across its rotting porch, locals heard the whispered misery of ghosts. Footsteps creaked on stair boards and sobs filtered through walls. An Atlanta developer had planned...
Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven
Ron Rash
13 min
The Green Door
USA
Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly...
The Green Door
O. Henry
10 min
Services
USA
September 12, 1950. The survivors limp down the mountain to a 6×6 that drops them at the field service platoon behind the hills. Seven men remaining from forty, stunned and filthy as they line up for...
Services
Gordon Haber
8 min
Are You Enjoying Your Forgiveness?
USA
It was the 15th of the August of 1999, the morning before the wedding of Benjamin Kern and Maitreya Scheffer, ceremony and celebration to be hosted by the bride’s parents at their home in Bethel, Vermont,...
Are You Enjoying Your Forgiveness?
Julia May Jonas
31 min
A Mighty Nice Man
USA
The child Charlotte sat on the narrow curbstone, her cheek against one knee, drawing idly in the dust with a stick. She sniffed at the flesh of her leg, smelt the dust and the sweat on...
A Mighty Nice Man
Patricia Highsmith
8 min
Rollingwood
USA
It’s still dark when the weeping erupts, so Mather knows it’s early. How early he isn’t sure, but he won’t be able to fall back asleep, so it doesn’t matter. He pulls the extra pillow over...
Rollingwood
Ben Marcus
30 min
10 to the 16 to 1
USA
But the best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.                                                                               Stephen Hawking, “The Future...
10 to the 16 to 1
James Patrick Kelly
36 min
The Other Woman
USA
“I am in love with my wife,” he said–a superfluous remark, as I had not questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten minutes and then he said it again. I...
The Other Woman
Sherwood Anderson
14 min
The Enigmatic Crime of the Signals Private
Iraq
Gentlemen, my name is Jamal Ahmad. I work as a signals private in Forward Reconnaissance Unit 312, engaging the American enemy in the south.   I confess in your presence, and I am of sound mind,...
The Enigmatic Crime of the Signals Private
Ali Badr
7 min
The Curfew Tolls
USA
“It is not enough to be the possessor of genius—the time and the man must conjoin. An Alexander the Great, born into an age of profound peace, might scarce have troubled the world—a Newton, grown up...
The Curfew Tolls
Stephen Vincent Benét
25 min
Cannibalism In The Cars
USA
I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way West, after changing cars at Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat...
Cannibalism In The Cars
Mark Twain
13 min
A White Heron
USA
The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a...
A White Heron
Sarah Orne Jewett
16 min
Soul Anatomy
USA
323 Juneberry Way, Deptford, NJ 08096 (856) 848-0501 Lmanfredo@comcast.net   In certain places there exists a permeating pointlessness to life with an aura of despair so acute that its inhabitants come to be unafraid, or, at...
Soul Anatomy
Lou Manfredo
29 min
The Other Two
USA
Waythorn, on the drawing-room hearth, waited for his wife to come down to dinner It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation. He was not...
The Other Two
Edith Wharton
29 min
Nothing Ruins a Good Story Like an Eyewitness
USA
You got it wrong, son. You exaggerated the wrong things and failed to exaggerate the right things. I know you’re supposed to know your business, but you wrote your story from a long way off and...
Nothing Ruins a Good Story Like an Eyewitness
Matt Cashion
12 min
Leaving the Meadows
USA
Two people came through the double glass doors of a twelve-story brick building and walked along the chain link fence to the parking lot. The tall, gray-haired man guided the short, white-haired woman by her elbow,...
Leaving the Meadows
Megan Staffel
18 min
The Tree of Knowledge
UK
It was one of the secret opinions, such as we all have, of Peter Brench that his main success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was...
The Tree of Knowledge
Henry James
23 min
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