gambler whose knife pierced his thick hide: he was the victim of a
condition for which he was no more to blame than the man who stabbed
him. Stephen Crane thus speaks through the lips of one of the
characters:--

"We are all in it! This poor gambler isn't even
a noun. He is a kind of an adverb. Every sin is
the result of a collaboration. We, five of us, have
collaborated in the murder of this Swede. Usually
there are from a dozen to forty women really involved
in every murder, but in this case it seems
to be only five men--you, I, Johnnie, Old Scully,
and that fool of an unfortunate gambler came
merely as a culmination, the apex of a human movement,
and gets all the punishment."

And then this typical and arresting piece of irony:--

"The corpse of the Swede, alone in the saloon,
had its eyes fixed upon a dreadful legend that
dwelt atop of the cash-machine: 'This registers the
amount of your purchase.'"

In "The Monster," the ignorance, prejudice and cruelty of an entire
community are sharply focussed. The realism is painful; one blushes for
mankind. But while this story really belongs in the volume called
"Whilomville Stories," it is properly left out of that series. The
Whilomville stories are pure comedy, and "The Monster" is a hideous
tragedy.