"The Camel's Back" (Chapter III of V) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Yesterday: Chapter II of "The Camel's Back")

"The Howard Tates are, as every one who lives in Toledo knows, the most formidable people in town." So begins Chapter III of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Camel's Back" (1920). To continue reading that early short story of his and to continue reading Chapter III of that story, click here.

(Tomorrow: Chapter IV of "The Camel's Back")

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

American writer

"The Camel's Back" (Chapter II of V) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(Yesterday: Chapter I of "The Camel's Back")

"Mrs. Nolak was short and ineffectual looking, and on the cessation of the world war had belonged for a while to one of the new nationalities." So begins Chapter II of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Camel's Back" (1920). To continue reading that early short story of his and to continue reading Chapter II of that story, click here.

(Tomorrow: Chapter III of "The Camel's Back")

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

American writer

"The Camel's Back" (Chapter I of V) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The glazed eye of the tired reader resting for a second on the above title will presume it to be merely metaphorical. Stories about the cup and the lip and the bad penny and the new broom rarely have anything to do with cups or lips or pennies or brooms. This story is the exception. It has to do with a material, visible and large-as-life camel's back." So begins F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Camel's Back" (1920). To continue reading Chapter I of that story, click here.

(Tomorrow: Chapter II of "The Camel's Back")

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

American writer

"The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham" by H. G. Wells

"I set this story down, not expecting it will be believed, but, if possible, to prepare a way of escape for the next victim. He, perhaps, may profit by my misfortune. My own case, I know, is hopeless,and I am now in some measure prepared to meet my fate." So begins H. G. Wells's classic short story "The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham." To read that short story in its entirety online, click here.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

English writer

"Of Modern Books" by Carolyn Wells

A pantoum is a Malay verse form consisting of an indefinite number of quatrains with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the following one. "Of making many books there is no end" (Ecclesiastes 12:12, King James Version). So reads the first line of the poem "Of Modern Books" by Carolyn Wells. That poem is a humorous pantoum about reading and books. To read that poem, that pantoum, click here.

Carolyn Wells (1862-1942)

American writer

Poem: a tanka by Saigyo Hoshi

Here is an untitled poem, a tanka, by Japanese poet Saigyo Hoshi (1118-1190).

Now indeed I know
that when we said "remember,"
and we swore it so,
it was in "we will forget"
that our thoughts most truly met.

(The original source of this poem and the original source of its anonymous translation into English are both unknown. The poem above was quoted in Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia.)

Saigyo Hoshi

in the Hyakunin Isshu