1924. I'm going to go story by story so I don't forget. At least that's the plan; we'll see how far I get.
"Champlin" by Morgan Burke is a rollicking men's adventure tale. Americans sail to the far East. There is romance, fighting, bars, exotic island women, and an excellent twist at the end. Unfortunately as was common at the time the term Chink is used for Chinese once.
"Billy" by Mildred Cram is a tale of a silent movie star modeled after Charlie Chaplin. He gets tired of being famous, because he can't get any peace. People recognize him wherever he goes. He goes away to an island where there are some natives who will never have heard of him. The he puts himself to the ultimate test: to see if he can make them laugh. Very good story. Speaks to the problems of fame today well, even without the TV, the cell phones and the internet.
"Phantom Adventure" by Floyd Dell might have been a little shocking in the 20s. It deals with adultery in an artful way. The hero settled down to a conventional life, with a good job, a wife and kids, but he had always longed for adventure. One night as he's wistfully mooning around wishing for an adventure he thinks he can never have, he opens the garden gate and chances upon a girl and has an affair. A one night stand really. At first he thinks he'll have to tell his wife, but then after all he reasons, how different is it from reading about it in a story. So he pretends it was just a story he read somewhere. He even tells it to an author friend [Floyd Dell?] who writes it up for him. Clever but unshocking by today's standards.
"The Cracked Teapot" by Charles Caldwell Dobie is about a swindler. He's seems like he used to cheating just about everyone he meets, but on this one occasion, he develops a bit of a conscience, and takes the short con instead of the long con on account of it. So cleverly told, I feel like the author himself must have been able to con anyone out of anything.
"The Last Dive" by Carlos Drake is about a man who dives from a high platform into a tiny tank of water for a living. It is a brief few minutes of what he is thinking just before and during his dive. Very suspenseful.
"Adventures of Andrew Lang" by Charles J. Finger is a dramatic adventure story of an unscrupulous fortune seeker/conman from the perspective of one of his many victims. It was remarkable for the sheer amount of adventure and unscrupulousness packed into this story.
"The Biography of Blade" by Zona Gale was about a brief moment in the life of a married man when he thought he might chuck his family and change his life, but it passes, with but little changing. It is about bridled passion. It seemed very realistic in it's romance, at least to a romantic soul, like me.
"Corputt" by Tupper Greenwald is a story about some academics. An English teacher goes back to see his old mentor, the Corputt of the title, and finds him lost in a particularly English-professorial senility. Didn't do much for me. Might be good if you're big into Shakespeare. ( )