re listed in the special "Roll of Honor." In
compiling these lists I have permitted no personal preference or
prejudice to consciously influence my judgment. To the titles of certain
stories, however, in the "Rolls of Honor," an asterisk is prefixed, and
this asterisk, I must confess, reveals in some measure a personal
preference, for which, perhaps, I may be indulged. It is from this final
short list that the stories reprinted in this volume have been selected.

It has been a point of honor with me not to republish a story by an
English author or by any foreign author. I have also made it a rule not
to include more than one story by an individual author in the volume.
The general and particular results of my study will be found explained
and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume.

In past years it has been my pleasure and honor to dedicate the best
that I have found in the American magazines as the fruit of my labors to
the American artist who, in my opinion, has made the finest imaginative
contribution to the short story during the period considered. I take
pleasure in recalling the names of Benjamin Rosenblatt, Richard Matthews
Hallet, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Arthur Johnson, Anzia Yezierska, and
Sherwood Anderson. In my opinion Sherwood Anderson has made this year
once more the most permanent contribution to the American short story,
but as last year's book is associated with his name, I am happy to
dedicate this year's offering to a new and distinguished English artist,
A.E. Coppard, to whom the future offers in my opinion a rich harvest of
achievement.

EDWARD J. O'BRIEN.

Forest Hill, Oxon, England,
November 23, 1921

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1921

Note.--The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not
intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the
arrangement is alphabetical by authors.

BROTHERS[2]

By SHERWOOD ANDERSON

(From _The Bookman_)

I am at my house in the country and it is late October. It rains. Back
of my house is a forest and in front there is a road and beyond that
open fields. The country is one of low hills, flattening suddenly into
plains. Some twenty miles away, across the flat country, lies the huge
city, Chicago.

On this rainy day the leaves of the trees that line the road before my
window are falling like rain, the yellow, red, and golden leaves fall
straight down heavily. The rain beats them brutally d