Roosevelt; Fleta Campbell Springer's "The Role of Madame Ravelles" is
apparently a tapestry in weaving the stately figure of Georgette
LeBlanc. Ranking highest among these personal narratives, however, is
Mildred Cram's "Stranger Things--" Besides calling up, under the name
of Cecil Grimshaw, the irresistible figure of Oscar Wilde, the author
has created a supernatural tale of challenging intricacy and
imaginative genius. The only other stories of the supernatural to find
place in the Committee's first list are Maxwell Struthers Burt's
"Buchanan Hears the Wind" and Mary Heaton Vorse's "The Halfway House."
In all of these, suggestion, delicately managed, is the potent element
of success.

Animals figure in vaster numbers and under intensive psychological
study. That a race-horse owner goes nowadays to the astrologer for a
horoscope of his racer is a fact that insinuatingly elevates the beast
to the plane of his master. In the short story of 1921, the monkey,
the tiger, the elephant, the dog and all their kind are treated from
an anthropomorphic point of view. Courtney Ryley Cooper's
titles--"Love" and "Vengeance," for example--covering stories
dominated by the animal character, betray the author's ascription of
human attributes to his hero or villain. "Reynardine," by Donn Byrne,
retails with haunting charm the friendship between the Fitzpauls and
the fox, in an instance that tests the friendship. Foxes, for Morgan
of the story, "took on for him now a strange, sinister entity.... They
had become to him a quasi-human, hypernormal race.... They had tabus
as strict as a Maori's. Strange, mystical laws."--"Corkran of the
Clamstretch" uniquely portrays the ugly and heroic "R.T.C." throughout
as a gentleman, "who met triumph with boredom," and "defeat, as a
great gentleman should, with quiet courtesy and good humour." Samuel
A. Derieux adds "Comet" to his list of superintelligent dogs in a