CHAPTER I ‘Let–go–that–Oh-h-h! Please, now, will you? Don’tstart drinking again! Come on–give me the bottle. I told you I’d stay awake givin’ it to you. Come on. If you do like that a-way–then what are you going to be like when you go home. Come on–leave it with me–I’ll leave half in the bottle. Pul-lease. […]

When John Andros felt old he found solace in the thought of life continuing through his child. The dark trumpets of oblivion were less loud at the patter of his child’s feet or at the sound of his child’s voice babbling mad non sequiturs to him over the telephone. The latter incident occurred every afternoon […]

“And where’s Mr. Campbell?” Charlie asked. “Gone to Switzerland. Mr. Campbell’s a pretty sick man, Mr. Wales.” “I’m sorry to hear that. And George Hardt?” Charlie inquired. “Back in America, gone to work.” “And where is the Snow Bird?” “He was in here last week. Anyway, his friend, Mr. Schaeffer, is in Paris.” Two familiar […]

“How long does the doctor think now?” Mary asked. With his good arm Martin threw back the top of the sheet, disclosing that the plaster armor had been cut away in front in the form of a square, so that his abdomen and the lower part of his diaphragm bulged a little from the aperture. […]

It was Sunday–not a day, but rather a gap between two other days. Behind, for all of them, lay sets and sequences, the long waits under the crane that swung the microphone, the hundred miles a day by automobiles to and fro across a county, the struggles of rival ingenuities in the conference rooms, the […]

Author’s Note: In a moment of hasty misjudgment a whole paragraph of description was lifted out of this tale where it originated, and properly belongs, and applied to quite a different character in a novel of mine. I have ventured nonetheless to leave it here, even at the risk of seeming to serve warmed-over fare. […]

Some of the caddies were poor as sin and lived in one-room houses with a neurasthenic cow in the front yard, but Dexter Green’s father owned the second best grocery-store in Black Bear–the best one was “The Hub,” patronized by the wealthy people from Sherry Island–and Dexter caddied only for pocket-money. In the fall when […]

Jo Powell was a Jelly-bean. Much as I desire to make him an appealing character, I feel that it would be unscrupulous to deceive you on that point. He was a bred-in-the-bone, dyed-in-the-wool, ninety-nine three-quarters per cent Jelly-bean and he grew lazily all during Jelly-bean season, which is every season, down in the land of […]

Pat Hobby could always get on the lot. He had worked there fifteen years on and off–chiefly off during the past five–and most of the studio police knew him. If tough customers on watch asked to see his studio card he could get in by phoning Lou, the bookie. For Lou also, the studio had […]

This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea—if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip […]

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created–nothing. That is because we are all queer fish, queerer behind our faces and voices than we want any one to know or than we know ourselves. When […]

I Once on the long, covered piers, you have come into a ghostly country that is no longer Here and not yet There. Especially at night. There is a hazy yellow vault full of shouting, echoing voices. There is the rumble of trucks and the clump of trunks, the strident chatter of a crane and […]

WHEN the rain was over the sky became yellow in the west and the air was cool. Close to the street, which was of red dirt and lined with cheap bungalows dating from 1910, a little boy was riding a big bicycle along the sidewalk. His plan afforded a monotonous fascination. He rode each time […]