An example of the art of the short story at its best - de Maupassant's Looking Back

Read 3 more stories in the Milton Crane 1952 anthology, 50 Great Short Stories, not all of which are "great." EA Poe's 19th-century piece The Masque of the Red Death is one - not really a great story, kind of ghastly and over-written and material for a comic book or video game - a horrible plague that leads to blood-soaked death w/in 30 minutes of contact overtakes a medieval European principality, and the prince's effort live with courtiers inside a walled palace fails, as the plague invades. There's a bit of contemporary symbolism here - a wall won't really "protect" everyone, or anyone - and Poe touches on the universal fear of infection, still a fore in our society (see the recent Ebola panic in the U.S.), but the story is more significant as a forerunner of the modern short story and as an example of EAP at his most gruesome. Then there's Max Beerbohm's A.V.Laider, from the early 20th century is a curiosity - a too-long account of an encounter between two Englishmen, one of whom opines on his belief in palmistry and how that led him into a life of tragic remorse - with a twist at the end when the eponymous Laider pulls the rug out and says, no, he was only kidding. Yes, so what? Beerbohm is one of those authors who has slipped into obscurity, and we can see why: This story hardly stands up to the great Modern writers and feels irrelevant and over-written today. Then there's Guy de Maupassant, whose "Looking Back," another 19th-century entry, possibly the saddest and most moving story in this anthology: an elderly priest explains to a woman his decision to enter the priesthood, recounting a life in which he has struggled against all feeling and emotion. He suffered from loneliness in boyhood and was traumatized by the death of a pet dog and decided he needed a life in which he could be insolated from feelings of love and compassion. GdM treats this man with great delicacy and sympathy and at the end, when he walks off slowly into the night, we feel we have understood a whole sorrowful life in just a flash or a glimpse - a great example of the art of the short story and what writers can achieve through concision and intimation.