A modern galaxy

"Novelist and short-story writer" is a classification with which we are all familiar, yet it does not follow that those who have achieved success through the medium of the novel are likewise at home in the more precarious field of the short story. The converse is equally true. Houghton Mifflin Company include among their authors a significant number who have demonstrated their ability to navigate a full-rigged ship and a catboat with equal dexterity. The sixteen short stories published here are offered both as testimony to their versatility and as an earnest of their adroit handling of the briefer form. At the end of the volume appears a list of the published books of each of these writers, whose conspicuous talents have brought them recognition in these two major departmetns of fiction."--Publisher's note