A Young Man in a Hurry, and Other Short Stories

Robert W. Chambers gathered ten short tales in this 1904 collection, most of them light romances set against American landscapes he clearly loved. The opening story is a comedy of coincidence: on a snowy New York night, a young man in a rush climbs into the wrong cab and finds himself tangled up with a woman equally caught in the hurry. Other pieces move out into country settings where fishing, hunting, and wild scenery set the tone, among them “The Shining Band,” “The Fire-Warden,” and “The Market-Hunter.” Written near the peak of Chambers’ popularity, the book shows a gentler side of the author who once wrote unsettling weird fiction: warm, unhurried, and attentive to place and to the small accidents that nudge people toward each other.