style is peculiarly delicate and refined. She wrote
of the people with truth and sympathy, without a touch of satire. A
White Heron and The Country of the Pointed Firs are among her beautiful
stories; read from the latter.

Ellen Glasgow has laid the scenes of her stories in the South, largely
in Virginia. Her themes are unusual and worked out in a broad, unhurried
way. The Voice of the People, The Deliverance, The Battle-Ground, and
Ancient Law are all worth reading. Select from The Deliverance.

Helen Martin in Tillie, A Mennonite Maid and Elsie Singmaster in several
stories have both taken the quaint Pennsylvania Dutch to write of, with
their remoteness of life from the world.

IX--SHORT STORIES

Of late years, short stories, largely written by women, have crowded our
magazines. It is impossible to choose more than a few for a program, but
club-women may add to those suggested all their favorites, and bring in
short stories to read at one meeting. In addition to the older writers,
Rebecca Harding Davis, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and others, take the
following:

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, though the author of several novels, is perhaps
our greatest short-story writer. Her characters, especially those drawn
from New England rural life, are reproduced with marvelous fidelity. She
understands their foibles, their oddities, and writes of them with
fidelity and humor. A New England Nun is called her best book; read any
story from it.

Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, the author of The Perfect Tribute as well
as many stories of a lighter character, writes charmingly.

Margarita Spalding Gerry in The Toy Shop has something really unusual,
both in theme and treatment.

Octave Thanet (Alice French) vivaciously represents plain people; her
Missionary Sheriff and Stories of a Western Town are well known; read
from either.

Add to these names those already given under other heads for this
outline: Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Brown, and Mrs. Cutting.

As has already been suggested, the year's work may be expanded into a
complete study of American women writers. If this is done, begin with
those of early years: Lydia Maria Child and Margaret Fuller; add to them
our essayists, Helen Hunt Jackson, Agnes Repplier, Vida Scudder; our
poets, the Cary sisters, Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Larcom, Emily Dickinson,
Edith Thomas, Celia Thaxter, May Riley Smith, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Emma
Lazarus, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Josephine Preston Peab