The Top 10 Short Stories - Ambrose Bierce
()
About this ebook
Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.
In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?
The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.
Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.
Ambrose Bierce is an author whose words take us one way and then send us another. These miniature masterpieces all have a central truth and plausibility that seems to vanish in an ending that can be anything from wry, to shocking to hallucinatory.
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was an American novelist and short story writer. Born in Meigs County, Ohio, Bierce was raised Indiana in a poor family who treasured literature and extolled the value of education. Despite this, he left school at 15 to work as a printer’s apprentice, otherwise known as a “devil”, for the Northern Indianan, an abolitionist newspaper. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union infantry and was present at some of the conflict’s most harrowing events, including the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. During the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864, Bierce—by then a lieutenant—suffered a serious brain injury and was discharged the following year. After a brief re-enlistment, he resigned from the Army and settled in San Francisco, where he worked for years as a newspaper editor and crime reporter. In addition to his career in journalism, Bierce wrote a series of realist stories including “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “Chickamauga,” which depict the brutalities of warfare while emphasizing the psychological implications of violence. In 1906, he published The Devil’s Dictionary, a satirical dictionary compiled from numerous installments written over several decades for newspapers and magazines. In 1913, he accompanied Pancho Villa’s army as an observer of the Mexican Revolution and disappeared without a trace at the age of 71.
Read more from Ambrose Bierce
The Classic American Short Story MEGAPACK ® (Volume 1): 34 of the Greatest Stories Ever Written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Famous Modern Ghost Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult: Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories That Started It All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 4 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hellbent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Devil's Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest American Short Stories (Vol. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil's Dictionary: Satirical Definitions of Everyday Words Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil's Dictionary Illustrated Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWrite It Right Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Masterpieces of Occult & Supernatural Fiction Vol. 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCivil War Memories: Nineteen Stories of Battle, Bravery, Love, and Tragedy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Devils Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5TRICK OR TREAT Boxed Set: 200+ Eerie Tales from the Greatest Storytellers: Horror Classics, Mysterious Cases, Gothic Novels, Monster Tales & Supernatural Stories: Sweeney Todd, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Frankenstein, The Vampire, Dracula, Sleepy Hollow, From Beyond… Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Top 10 Short Stories - Ambrose Bierce
Related ebooks
Short Stories About the American Civil War: Stories about life as a soldier, love in a time of war, horrors of battle & more Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/57 best short stories - American Civil War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 best short stories by Ambrose Bierce Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/57 best short stories - War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChapter & Verse - Ambrose Bierce Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWetzel, the Scout: The Captives of the Wilderness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWetzel, the Scout Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWetzel, the Scout: Western Novel: The Captives of the Wilderness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Border Watch A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMyths and Legends of Our Own Land — Volume 05 : Lights and shadows of the South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLast Stand (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSwift and Sure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Cumberland Vendetta Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBorder Watch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThey Called Him Stonewall: A Life of Lieutenant General T. J. Jackson, CSA Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gleaner Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings3 Books To Know Travel Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Cumberland Vendetta Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClay Nash 24: The Brazos Chore Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Guerilla Chief, and Other Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn and Out of Rebel Prisons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hunters of the Hills Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond the Black River Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings7 short stories that ESFP will love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Geneva Deception Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn Vytal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Man's Land Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anna Karenina: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Nigerwife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Salvage the Bones: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Top 10 Short Stories - Ambrose Bierce
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Top 10 Short Stories - Ambrose Bierce - Ambrose Bierce
The Top Ten Short Stories - Ambrose Bierce
Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.
In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?
The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.
Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.
Ambrose Bierce is an author whose words take us one way and then send us another. These miniature masterpieces all have a central truth and plausibility that seems to vanish in an ending that can be anything from wry, to shocking to hallucinatory.
Index of Contents
An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge
A Horseman in the Sky
A Diagnosis of Death
Chickamauga
The Affair At Coulter's Creek
The Boarded Window
The Story of a Conscience
The Coup de Grace
The Moonlit Road
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as support,
that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it. Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at parade rest,
the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his unsteadfast footing,
then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move, What a sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. If I could free my hands,
he thought, I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance.
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an