A vague and terrifying science, astronomy! Only as a subdued though highly decorative lighting effect can I regard the stellar pageant with equanimity.

To be sure I have learned to locate the Dipper and Orion and Cassiopeia’s Chair and a few other popular favorites, but this painful knowledge was acquired solely for its conversational value on summer evenings at week-end, house or yachting parties.

Beyond that, all I know about the science of astronomy could be as accurately demonstrated with the perforations of a colander, held up to the light, as on the most perfect star map in the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the truth must be told, I much prefer Asterisks.

With a moon and a mariner’s compass and a good road map or chart, the traveler by land or sea can get along very well without the stars, but in the trackless mazes of literature and art, how would the wandering Philistine fare without Asterisks? An anthology or guide of any kind without Asterisks would be as unthinkable as a Dalmatian dog without spots or a red-headed boy without freckles.

Imagine yourself in the city of Berlin with a de-stellated Baedeker. You would make Moses-when-the-light-went-out look like a torchlight procession!

Not that I cite Herr Karl Baedeker as the model of stellar perfection. Too many stars may prove as demoralizing as too many cooks. Even that guide, topographer and friend of the tourist is at times bewildering, if not misleading.

On page 133 of Baedeker’s Berlin, “Furniture From the Boudoir of Queen Marie Antoinette” has two stars, ** while “Elijah in the Desert,” on page 108, has, in addition to all his other troubles, to worry along with one star.

And that is not the worst of it.

On page 163, “a well-preserved ArchÆopteryx in Solnhofen slate,” to me by all odds the most interesting object in Berlin, has no star at all! * * *

But no matter how annoying it is, you must never blame the Asterisks. They only did as they were told and stood where Herr Baedeker placed them and, if they did wrong, Herr Baedeker alone was responsible. A good writer—or editor—is good to his Asterisks, and when he puts them in a false position we must make due allowance.

If Asterisks could combine and form a protective union, there might be some hope for them, but a flair for collective bargaining is not in their nature. That being the case, I suggest the establishment of a Federal Licensing Bureau empowered to investigate the qualifications of would-be employers of Asterisks and issue or withhold licenses accordingly.

And it is high time something were done about it.

Only lately there has been brought to my notice a case of so flagrant a nature that, were there such an institution as a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Asterisks, I should feel it my duty to call their attention to it.

To come down to brass tacks, as the saying is, the flagrant case of cruelty to Asterisks, to which I refer, consists of a fat book, called “The Best Short Stories of 1921.” Edited by Edward J. O’Brien—Published by Small Maynard.

Never, I think, were a mob of overworked employees so pitifully huddled together in an ill-ventilated factory as are the Asterisks in this Sweatshop of Twaddle.

The Sweatshop proper—if a Sweatshop may be so qualified—is situated in the rear of the book, occupying about a fifth of its volume, and consists of:

A Bibliographical Roll of Honor of American Short Stories for 1920 and 1921 in which “the best stories are indicated by an Asterisk.”

A Roll of Honor of Foreign Short Stories in American Magazines in which “Stories of special excellence are indicated by an Asterisk.”

Volumes of short stories published in the United States. “An Asterisk before a title indicates distinction.”

Volumes of short stories published in England and Ireland. “An Asterisk before a title indicates distinction.”

Volumes of Short Stories published in France. “An Asterisk before a title, etc.” Follows then a list of articles on the Short Story and last of all An Index of Short Stories in Books, and here the Asterisks are forced to work overtime and Mr. O’Brien’s English gets a bit sloppy. He says:

“Three Asterisks prefixed to a title indicate the more or less permanent literary value of the story.”

“More or less permanent” reminds me of an advertisement I once saw in a street car: “Face Powder makes your complexion more irresistible.” Is it possible that Mr. O’Brien wrote it?

In the division entitled Magazine Averages, Mr. O’Brien comes another cropper with “Three Asterisk stories are of somewhat permanent literary value.” Again, in the introduction, “Sherwood Anderson has made this year once more the most permanent contribution to the American Short Story.”

Mr. O’Brien’s invention of varying degrees of permanence is an important contribution to science and entitles him to receive at the very least the Order of the Golden Asterisk of the Second Class with Palms.

Such, in brief, is the Sweatshop in the rear where the toiling Asterisks labor in weary shifts of one, two and three, pounding out asinine averages and percentages of permanency and near-permanency and plu-permanency with a zeal that would do credit to the framer of a Volstead Act.

Now let us walk round to the front of the Factory, where in his cosy business office which he calls the “Introduction” the Foreman of the works, Mr. Edward J. O’Brien, will tell us in the airy argon of the shop all about the Fictional Flivvers—in which he is a second-hand dealer—how they are made, what they are worth and, if permanent, just how long their permanence will last.

As Foreman O’Brien warms up to his subject he will describe in vitally pulsating phrases that would drive a movie writer mad with envy, the convulsion of Nature that attended the birth of the American Short Story. “The ever-widening seething maelstrom of cross currents thrusting into more and more powerful conflict from year to year the contributory elements brought to a new American culture by the dynamic creative energies, physical and spiritual, of many races.”

All of which speechifying translated into plain talk conveys the astounding information that the hooch of American Fiction is being brewed in the much-advertised Melting Pot! Well, why couldn’t he say so and be done with it?

Speaking of the Anglo-Saxon he says: “The Anglo-Saxon was beginning to absorb large tracts of other racial fields of memory and to share the experience of Scandinavian and Russian and German and Italian and Polish and Irish and African and Asian members of the body politic.” The Melting Pot again! What did I tell you! Continuing, Mr. O’Brien describes the process of fermentation as a new chaos set up by tracts of remembered racial experience interacting upon one another under the tremendous pressure of our nervous, keen and eager civilization. He doesn’t explain exactly how a thing so completely lacking in the elements of design as a chaos should be “set up” to get the best results. All he tells us is that fresh chaos is good material for American literature, and that our Mr. Anderson and others are very busy in a half unconscious way, trying to make “worlds” out of it.

By “worlds” I take it Mr. O’Brien means something vast and vague and “vitally compelling” and “organic” that our Mr. Anderson and others will fuse into American Fiction “in artistic crucibles of their own devising.”

On the whole, things look pretty bright for the American Short Story, what with the “fresh living current which flows through the best American work, and the Psychological and imaginative reality which American writers have conferred upon it,” and the “seething maelstrom of cross currents,” and the “dynamic creative energies,” and above all the chaos, the great American Chaos—fresh—unlimited—inexhaustible—ripe for the “artistic crucible,” in which it is soon to be fused into a new cosmos of “organic fiction” by the White Headed Boy of the Western World.

On the other hand, how gloomy the outlook pictured by Mr. O’Brien for the Englishman and the Scotchman and the Irishman! “Living at home—writing out of a background of racial memory and established tradition.” It fairly gives me the shivers. No wonder their fiction lacks compelling vitality!

But wouldn’t you think that with all the Chaos lying round loose in Europe these days, the Scotchman at least would grab enough of it to create a bonnie new world of vitally compelling fiction for himself? That’s what I thought, but it seems I thought wrong. The Foreign Chaos differs from the Domestic variety in that it is “an end rather than a beginning, a Chaos in which the Tower of Babel had fallen.”

Once more, to translate the O’Brien speechifying into speech—for the benefit of readers who are not movie fans—the American brand of Chaos is fresh and the European Chaos is stale.

The elemental principles underlying all forms of creation are the same, whether you are creating a short story or a buckwheat cake. The same dynamic laws must be obeyed.

You may have the very best possible formula for the creation of a buckwheat cake and the best crucible—I mean the most artistic frying pan that can be bought; but unless the contributory elements of heat, butter and eggs are physically and spiritually beyond reproach, your buckwheat cake will be a failure.

So, too, you may have the most perfect recipe for a short story—from Mr. O’Brien’s own book—and you may have the most vitally compelling Psychology—straight from the farm—but if your Chaos be of the European cold-storage brand instead of the “strictly fresh,” or, better still, “new-laid” domestic variety, your Short Story will be—like most of those in Mr. O’Brien’s collection—quite unfit for human consumption.

That Mr. O’Brien is a scientist of the first rank has been amply proved by his startling invention of comparative Permanence—see Roll of Honor—but, though it is interesting to know that by the use of Asterisks what was once believed to be the essential characteristic of Permanence can be modified, I doubt if half of one per cent Permanence will ever become popular.

But Mr. O’Brien has made another and more practical contribution to science.

He has computed by means of Asterisks, that thirty-eight short stories by American authors “would not occupy more space than five novels of average length.”

What a priceless boon to the budding author about to embark upon his first short story!

All he has to do is to borrow five novels of average length, cut out the pages and divide the total number into seven equal piles, each one of which will be seven and three-fifths of the total pile.

Six of these piles he may throw away or return to the friends who loaned them—or the Public Library, as the case may be. He must then take the seventh pile and placing the pages end to end on the floor—the roof of the house will do if the floor be too small—and procuring a strip of paper of exactly the same length, begin the Story at one end and continue writing until he reaches the other end.

This will insure the work’s being of the right length for an American Short Story, and, if Mr. O’Brien’s other two conditions as to “form and substance” are properly fulfilled, the Story will be quite all right and may be published—with three Asterisks—in the Roll of Honor for the following year.

The luncheon hour at the O’Brien Sweatshop is devoted to an Efficiency Drill of all the Asterisks employed.

The Drill lasts an hour and is designed to keep the Asterisks in perfect physical condition for their arduous work.

First, there is a grand march of Asterisks in varying formations of ones, twos and threes. This is followed by running matches and exhibitions of high jumping, wrestling and leaping through hoops.

An exciting game of Roll of Honor closes the exercises.

This is the most violent exercise of all and consists of rolling blindfold down an inclined plane and landing in a huge pile of short stories.

The Asterisk that picks up the best Short Story, receives as a reward an honorable mention in the Annual Report.

There have been many unkind things said about the late-lamented year Nineteen Twenty-One, but after inspecting this work of Edward J. O’Brien’s I am inclined to think that the title proclaiming it to be a collection of Nineteen Twenty-One’s best Short Stories, is the most slanderous statement of them all. It is enough to make even the Statue of Liberty blush!

In no English-speaking country is the Short Story such a recognized feature of everyday social intercourse as it is in America.

It is almost impossible for two Americans to meet anywhere or at any time of the day or night without an exchange of Short Stories. Sometimes the form of the telling is good, sometimes bad. More often it is very bad form indeed, but two things the Story must have—to “get over”—substance and brevity.

The same two things are demanded in the written story. I do not include Form, because Form is essential to Brevity. Artistic Brevity cannot be achieved without Form.

Substance, to paraphrase the Bard, is such stuff as Stories are made on. It must be of good weave, or the story will not hold together.

Some of the Stories in the O’Brien collection are of a rotten fabric, others, while well woven, have a most disagreeable pattern. Others again are dyed with imported dyes from Kipling, Conrad and Company. At least one of the stories has no fabric at all, but the weaver—like the Weaver in the Fairy Tales—has gone through the motions of weaving so plausibly, not to say impudently, that many, like Mr. O’Brien, are deceived by it.

Mr. O’Brien, defining Substance, tells us that it amounts to nothing unless it be organic substance “in which the pulse of life is beating.” Thereby he admits that Substance is Stuff, but insists that it must be Live Stuff!

Mr. O’Brien is mistaken; in one of the finest Short Stories ever written the Substance of the Story is a Shadow!

The Story is by “Anderson.”

What, our Mr. Anderson?

Great Heavens, no! Hans Christian Andersen.

I have not the space to speak in detail of more than one of the Stories in Mr. O’Brien’s collection, nor will it be necessary; one specimen of the deadly Amonita Bulbosa in a mess of mushrooms is enough to justify the partaker thereof in damning the whole dish, if he live to express any opinion at all; so, if in a collection that claims to be composed of “Best Short Stories” I find one that is very bad in both Substance and Form, indeed so bad in Substance that it hardly deserves to be called a Story at all, I may surely, with perfect justice, damn the whole book as being false to its title and not what it pretends to be.

But in censuring Mr. Anderson’s story “Brothers,” I am not so much criticizing the author as admonishing the compiler of “The Best Stories” for the gross misuse of an Asterisk.

One does not have to be an officer of the S. P. C. A. to rebuke a truck driver who is abusing a horse that is hitched to a truckload of junk that is much too heavy for it.

By the same token, I do not pose as a critic when I take Mr. O’Brien to task for hitching an Asterisk to Sherwood Anderson’s story, “Brothers.”

I should not have noticed the Anderson load of junk, but for the stupidity of its driver, which annoys me.

It is no way to treat an Asterisk.

The kindest thing that can be said of “Brothers” is that its inclusion in a collection of American Short Stories puts it in a false position. It is unmistakably American—the mark of the “Melting Pot” is all over it—and I suppose it is Short, though it takes a lot of patience to read it, but it is not a story in the accepted sense of the word.

It starts nowhere, it does nothing and it gets nowhere, reminding one vaguely of the three Japanese monkeys who see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing.

To apply the O’Brien test, it has no Substance. The weaver went through the motions of weaving, but he wove nothing. There is no “stuff” here.

Neither has it Form. The material—such as it is—is not shaped “into the most beautiful and satisfying form by skillful selection and arrangement.” That is to say, it violates Mr. O’Brien’s own rule.

If I were asked to give the thing a name, I should say that “Brothers” is a sort of cross between a very dull parody of one of G. S. Street’s “Episodes” and a grimy but ambitious newspaper “story” touched up with a dash of that old-fashioned freak of lap-dog literature known as the “Poem in Prose,” much petted by Turgenieff in the early eighties, a vehicle—if one may be permitted to change similes in midstream—in which you pay as you enter and as you leave, both.

You pay as you enter with a soddenly self-conscious rhapsody in G minor, and you pay as you leave with a tiresome repetition of the same.

When a Story of the O’Brien school begins like that, you feel sure it is going to lead to something disgusting and you are seldom disappointed, certainly not in this instance.

It is a sort of elegy on the falling leaves.

Mr. Anderson almost weeps for pity of the falling leaves. Listen to the patter of the Andersonian tears:

“* * * the yellow, red and golden leaves fall straight down heavily. The rain beats them brutally down. They are denied a last golden flash across the sky. In October, leaves should be carried away, out over the plains, in a wind. They should go dancing away.”

You have a feeling as you read this, that Mr. A. rather fancies it himself. You can almost hear him say: “I do this fallen-leaf stuff rather well, if you know what I mean!” and since it is the only pretty bit in the Story, you hardly blame him for repeating it at the end.

For my part, I am suspicious; I am not from Missouri, but, nevertheless, I require to be shown.

I ask myself: “Is Mr. Anderson sincere?”

I read further on, and I find that he is not.

This is what I read:

“* * * His arms tightened about the body of the little dog so that it screamed with pain. I stepped forward and tore the arms away, and the dog fell to the ground and lay whining. No doubt it had been injured. Perhaps ribs had been crushed. The old man stared at the dog lying at his feet.”

Nothing more about the little dog until, a few lines further on, Mr. Anderson shows that the dying agony of a little dog excited only a passing interest in him. “An hour ago the old man of the house in the forest went past my door and the little dog was not with him. It may be that as we talked in the fog he crushed the life out of his companion. It may be that the dog, like the workman’s wife and her unborn child, is now dead. 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 * * *,” and so on, with a repetition of the opening rhapsody of grief for the falling leaves.

So, you see, to Sherwood Anderson a falling leaf is a heart-rending sight, but a falling puppy, even though its ribs be crushed and it scream with agony, is quite another thing.

No, Mr. Anderson is not sincere.

And if an artist, though he fairly reek with seething dynamic chaos and vitally compelling psychology, have not sincerity, all the Asterisks in Mr. O’Brien’s sweatshop will avail him naught.