xplanation of the low
level lies in the financial depression which forced a number of
editors to buy fewer stories, to buy cheaply, or to search their
vaults for remnant of purchases made in happier days. Improvement
began with the return to better financial conditions.

The several members of the Committee have seldom agreed on the
comparative excellence of stories, few being of sufficient superiority
in the opinion of the Committee as a whole to justify setting them
aside for future consideration. The following three dozen candidates,
more or less, average highest:

Addington, Sarah, Another Cactus Blooms (_Smart Set_, December).

Alexander, Elizabeth, Fifty-Two Weeks for Florette [Reprinted as by
Elizabeth Alexander Heermann.] (_Saturday Evening Post_, August 13).

Allen, Maryland, The Urge (_Everybody's_, September).

Arbuckle, Mary, Wasted (_Midland_, May).

Beer, Thomas, Mummery (_Saturday Evening Post_, July 30).

Burt, Maxwell Struthers, Buchanan Hears the Wind (_Harper's_, August).

Byrne, Donn, Reynardine (_McClure's_, May).

Chittenden, Gerald, The Victim of His Vision (_Scribner's_, May).

Comfort, Will Levington, and Dost, Zamin Ki, The Deadly Karait
(_Asia_, August).

Cooper, Courtney Ryley, and Creagan, Leo F. Martin, Gerrity Gets Even
(_American_, July).

Cooper, Courtney Ryley, Old Scarface (_Pictorial Review_, April).

Cram, Mildred, Stranger Things--(_Metropolitan_, January).

Derieux, Samuel A., Comet (_American_, December).

Hull Helen R., Waiting (_Touchstone_, February).

Jackson, Charles Tenney, The Man who Cursed the Lilies (_Short
Stories_, December 10).

Kerr, Sophie, Wild Earth (_Saturday Evening Post_, April 2).

Kniffin, Harry Anable, The Tribute (_Brief Stories_, September).

Lewis, O.F., The Get-A way (_Red Book_, February); The Day of Judgment
(_Red Book_, October).

Mahoney, James, Wilfrid Reginald and the Dark Horse (_Century_,
August).

Marshall, Edison, The Heart of Little Shikara (_Everybody's_,
January).

Morris, Gouverneur, Groot's Macaw (_Cosmopolitan_, November); Just One
Thing More (_Cosmopolitan_, December).

Mumford, Ethel Watts, "Aurore" (_Pictorial Review_, February); The
Crowned Dead (_Short Stories_, July); Funeral Frank (_Detective
Stories_, October 29).

Robbins, L.H., Mr. Downey Sits Down (_Everybody's_, June).

Steele, Wilbur Daniel, 'Toinette of Maissonnoir (_Pictorial Review_,
July); The Marriage in Kairwan (_Harp