“Now I Lay Me,” Ernest Hemingway

“Dolly: An Idyl of the Levee,” Lafcadio Hearn

“Prevalent Idea That Politeness Is Too Great a Luxury to Be Given to the Poor,” Margaret Fuller

“Theft” Katherine Anne Porter

“Spring Sesshin at Shokoku-ji,” Gary Snyder

“Mozart and the Gray Steward,” Thornton Wilder

“The Devil and Tom Walker,” Washington Irving

“Wilhelmina,” Constance Fenimore Woolson

“A Respectable Woman,” Kate Chopin

“The Joy of Nelly Deane,” Willa Cather

“An Encounter with an Interviewer,” Mark Twain

“The Wickedest Woman in Larchmont,” S. J. Perelman

“The Lover and the Tell-Tale,” Stephen Crane

“It’s an Honor,” Jimmy Breslin

“Love in the Night,” F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Secret Paragraphs about My Brother,” Adrienne Kennedy