I am indebted to the Editors of _The Red Magazine_, _The Bystander_, and to Messrs. C. Thomas & Co., for their kind permission to reproduce portions of this work. To offer a volume of short stories to the countrymen of Edgar Allan Poe and O. Henry is an operation which requires nerve. According to my publisher it also requires "a foreword" which I find, after consultation with the dictionary, is the same thing as a preface. Now to write a preface to one's own book seems to me about as embarrassing a task as any author can be asked to undertake. It is like standing outside the front door calling the attention of indifferent passers-by to the more attractive features of one's own house. They …
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