The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story

had to speak with the customers who came, these praying hours of Friday night. Shabbas morning at leas

d, what else have I ever asked you for? Don't you sit around, do nothing all the day, and aren't Flora's clothes a filth? and hardly if you'll cook o

he side wall: her eyes lay burning

the store. I saw a dead horse in the street.-A dead horse, two days dead, rotting and stiff. Against the grey of the living street, a livid dead horse: a hot stink was his cold death against the street's clean-ness. There are two little boys, wrapped in blue coat, blue muffler, leather caps. They stand above the gaunt head of the horse and sneer at him. His flan

dead, stones strike one's skull and fall sharp away, one is moveless. When one is dead, stones stri

a cold gas spurt. A store with clothes and a stove: no place for herself. A row of suits, all pressed and stiff with Meyer's diligence. A pile of suits, writhed with the wear of men, soiled, crumpled with traffic of streets, with bending of bodies in toil, in eati

There in the open door was

she was shorter and less t

the tailor-shop,

reddan's dress suit. Mr. Lanich to

troke of these two women, under a tailor's table the burn of a dirty child, mumb

is the

stroke came near

es

ears a swallow-tail and takes her out to parties. She has a diamond ring, her corsets are sweet. She has things to put into her time

irty with scizzors under a tailor table.

s? "Oh, no hurry. Better come in

ng of t

husband's shop, and to look upon her. Her eyes speak soft warm words that touch her hair,

against my stomach that does not bulge but lies soft and low like a cushion of silk. What for? My eyes see beauty. What for? O there is no God. If there is God, what for?-He will come back and work. He w

rightness of the store. The yellow light was hard like grains of sand under the quick of her nails. She was afraid of the street. She was hurt in

tore move

flung straight. It moved along the velvet path of the street, touching, not merging with its night. It moved, it moved, she sat still in its moving. The store caught up with Meyer. He entered the store. He was there. He was the

. A man with a mouth gentle, slow; with eyes timid to see. "Come d

s from which the scizzors are gone. She misses hard gleaming steel. She opens and shuts her fists and looks at them: she cries. But she does not move.-Her mother does not move.-Her father does not

old, and eateth not the bread of idleness.'-Lighten me, Lord, give me light. There is my daughter crying, who should sleep: and my wife sitting, who will not, who will never without me go home. She is afraid. She says she is afraid. She is sullen and silent. She is so fair and sweet against my heart. Lord! why did her hands that held my head speak a lie? and her silent lips that she let press upon my mouth, why were they lies? Lord, I cannot unders

arise, and cal

also, and he

ers have don

excellest

eitful and b

eareth the Lord, s

the fruit

rks praise her