The whole show is dreadful," she cried, coming out of the menagerie of M. Martin. She had justداستان been looking at that daring speculator "working with his hyena"--to speak in the style of the program.

"By what means," she continued, "can he have tamed these animals to such a point as to be certain of their affection for----."

"What seems to you a problem," said I, interrupting, "is really quite natural."

"Oh!" she cried, letting an incredulous smile wander over her lips.

"You think that beasts are wholly without passions?" I asked her. "Quite the reverse; we can communicate to them all the vices arising in our own state of civilization."

She looked at me with an air of astonishment.

"Nevertheless," I continued, "the first time I saw M. Martin, I admit, like you, I did give vent to an exclamation of surprise. I found myself next to an old soldier with the right leg amputated, who had come in with me. His face had struck me. He had one of those intrepid heads, stamped with the seal of warfare, and on which the battles of Napoleon are written. Besides, he had that frank good-humored expression which always impresses me favorably. He was without doubt one of those troopers who are surprised at nothing, who find matter for laughter in the contortions of a dying comrade, who bury or plunder him quite lightheartedly, who stand intrepidly in the way of bullets; in fact, one of those men who waste no time in deliberation, and would not hesitate to make friends with the devil himself. After looking very attentively at the proprietor of the menagerie getting out of his box, my companion pursed up his lips with an air of mockery and contempt, with that peculiar and expressive twist which superior people assume to show they are not taken in. Then when I was expatiating on the courage of M. Martin, he smiled, shook his head knowingly, and said, `Well known."
ادامه مطلب...

The short story is a literary genre. It is usually fictional narrative prose and tends to be more concise and to the point than longer works of fiction, such as novellas (in the modern sense of this term) and novels. Short stories have their origins in oral story-telling traditions and the prose anecdote, a swiftly-sketched situation that comes rapidly to its point. With the rise of the comparatively realistic novel, the short story evolved as a miniature, with some of its first perfectly independent examples in the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Anton Chekhov.

Short stories were a staple of early 19th century magazines and often led to recognition, fame, and novel-length projects for their authors. More recently, short stories are often collected in anthologies, categorized by topic or by critical import. Many authors today release compilations of their short stories in short story collections. Ron Carlson is a contemporary, multiple prize-winning author and educator noted for his short stories published in both magazines and in collections, such as "A Kind of Flying."

Some authors are known almost entirely for their short stories, either by choice (they didn"t write anything else) or by critical regard (short story writing is a challenging art). One such example is Jorge Luis Borges, who obtained American fame with his story, "The Garden of Forking Paths," published in Ellery Queen"s Mystery Magazine in August of 1948. Another fine example is O. Henry, author of the renowned "Gift of the Magi" and for whom a prestigious short story award is named (The O. Henry Award). Authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were highly capable in both novel writing and short stories