The Open Boat and Other Stories

continued since, in their astonishment, they had not replied to her first question. "Of course I'm not strong and I couldn't do very much, but I can sew well; and in a house where there was a good many men folks, I could do all the mending. Do you know any place where they would like me to come?" The young women did then exchange a smile, but it was a subtle tender smile, the edge of personal grief. "Well, no, madame," hesitatingly said one of them at last; "I don't think I know any one." A shade passed over the tiny old lady's face, a shadow of the wing of disappointment. "Don't you?" she said, with a little struggle to be brave, in her voice. Then the girl hastily continued--"But if you will give me your address, I may find some one, and if I do, I will surely let you know of it." The tiny old lady dictated her address, bending over to watch the girl write on a visiting card with a little silver pencil. Then she said-- "I thank you very much." She bowed to them, smiling, and went on down the avenue. As for the two girls, they walked to the curb and watched this aged figure, small and frail, in its black gown and curious black bonnet. At last, the crowd, the innumerable wagons, intermingling and changing with uproar and riot, suddenly engulfed it. ************************************* Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay. ************************************* STEPHEN CRANE'S WORKS --------- THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE _Post 8vo, cloth, 3s. net; ornamental wrapper, 2s. 6d. net._ [PIONEER SERIES. _The Saturday Review_--"Mr. Stephen Crane's picture of the effect of actual fighting on a raw regiment is simply unapproached in intimate knowledge and sustained imaginative strength. In the supreme moments of the fight he is possessed by the fiery breath of battle, and finds an inspired utterance that will reach the universal heart of man. This extraordinary book will appeal strongly to the insatiable desire to know the psychology of war--how the sights and sounds, the terrible details of the drama of battle, affect the senses and the soul of man." _St. James's Gazette_--"This is not merely a remarkable book; it is a revelation Mr. Crane has laid the War God on the dissecting-table, and exposed his every bone and nerve and sinew and artery to the public gaze." _The Speaker_--"Every page is crowded, not merely with incidents such as the war correspondent describes, but with the tragedy of life. The reader sees the battle, not from afar, but from the inside. He hears the laboured breathing of the wearied soldiers, sees the colour rising and falling in their cheeks, and feels at heart as they themselves did in this first act in the tremendous drama which so many people talk about and so few understand.... As a work of art, _The Red Badge of Courage_ deserves high praise. As a moral lesson that mankind still needs, the praise it deserves is higher still." --------- THE LITTLE REGIMENT _Post 8vo, cloth, 3s. net; ornamental wrapper, 2s. 6d. net._ [PIONEER SERIES. _The Athenæum_--"The extraordinary power of imagination is more wonderful than that of Defoe. It is in dialogue that he is at his strongest, for in this the words are used as the soldiers would have used them." --------------- London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C. ************************************* STEPHEN CRANE'S WORKS --------- THE THIRD VIOLET _Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s._ _The Athenæum_--"A vividness of portraiture which puts _The Third Violet_ on a high level--higher, we think, than Mr. Crane's very different _Maggie_, though perhaps lower than _The Little Regiment_, which is also very different. In his present book Mr. Crane is more the rival of Mr. Henry James than of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. But he is intensely American, which can hardly be said of Mr. Henry James, and it is possible that if he continues in his present line of writing he may be the author who will introduce the United States to the ordinary English world. We have never come across a book that brought certain sections of American society so perfectly before the reader as does _The Third Violet_. The picture is an extremely pleasant one, and its truth appeals to the English reader, so that the effect of the book is to draw him nearer to his American cousins. _The Third Violet_ incidentally contains the best dog that we have come across in modern fiction. Mr. Crane's dialogue is excellent, and it is dialogue of a type for which neither _The Red Badge of Courage_ nor his other books had prepared us." _The Academy_--"By this latest product of his genius our impression of Mr. Crane is confirmed: that for psychological insight, for dramatic intensity, and for potency of phrase he is already in the front rank of English-American writers of fiction, and that he possesses a certain separate quality which places him apart. It is a short story and a slender, but taking it in conjunction with what he has previously given us, there remains, in our judgment, no room for doubt." _The Bookman_--"An idyll, and a very pretty one. In _The Red Badge of Courage_ and _Maggie_ there is an intenser force; but in this slighter effort we feel the same directness, the same true reading of the workings of the mind, the same contempt for conventions and clap-trap sentiment." _The Sketch_--"There is a strong human interest in it, and a boyish vigour which is refreshing." _The Scotsman_--"It is very light, very amusing, and very American. The literary touch is singularly deft and felicitous, the strokes playful but unerring.... The treatment has the distinction which only a vivid imagination, a fine dramatic faculty and an intuitive perception of the deeper things of human nature can give to a book." _Manchester Guardian_--"It is invigorating to follow the breezy mountain life up in the pine woods.... The book abounds in those felicitous descriptions and bright dialogues of which Mr. Crane is master.... One more delightful dog is added to the heroes of fiction." _Daily Mail_--"We would not for the world have it other than it is.... In its short tantalisingly abrupt chapters, the tale gives the history of a wooing, a history clear, simple, and often sparkling as a rill of spring water." --------- MAGGIE: A Child of the Streets _12mo, buckram, gilt top, 2s._ _The Literary World_--"Contains all the force, all the power, and all the reality which Mr. Crane has proved his pen to possess." --------- THE BLACK RIDERS: Verse _12mo, leather, gilt top, 3s. net._ --------------- London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.