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“Stringing a Bear”

Uhm. Okay? One old frontiersman starts to tell a story about how he strung a bear with a lariat and then gets interrupted by his excitable friend, resumes the improbable story with the bear stringing ITSELF, and then has one last poke at his gabby buddy.

“The Baptism of Dobsho”

A dude’s friend gets into the religious spirit with this local new sect so much that he starts confessing sins that he’s never had part of and hinting at more. The narrator sets the baptism up for an outrageous prank that involves a now antiquated laxative powder that fizzes and dissolves into CO2 when wet, I guess like super pop-rocks.

“A Providential Intimation”

A man wins the jacket of a wealthy man and finds in the jacket pocket what he assumes is a great horse race tip on who to bet. The setup: he sends the money to a clergyman to place the bet. It turns out that the horse broke its neck, but then we find out that the horses are named after mine claims, which you can buy stock in…

“Mr. Jim Beckwourth’s Adventure”

Hey, this is the same guy who told the story about the exploding geothermal lake! This is a tall tale / fantasy that attempts to explain the origin of the hot spring phenomena in the Yellowstone region but sounds more like an area in the earth’s crust that is thin enough to see and feel the fires of Hell. Except that, well, you probably wouldn’t describe them as beautiful.

“How I Came to Like Dogs”

A ship is transporting some 60 to 70 million dogs and wrecks on a sandbar. The initial irony of this story is that, once everyone - dogs and men - get on a raft to drift at sea, they feed the sailors> to the dogs>. Since this is the early, opening twist, you can probably imagine where this story is going, but not how they come to this consumptive epiphany.

“Jo Dornan and the Ram”

This absolute unit refuses to back down from any danger that he can meet head on. In this case, the narrator observes Jo lock himself into a head-butting duel with a ram. Things don’t go quite the way in which he expected, and part of the tall tale feel comes from the description of when the ram finally makes contact, the moment describing some sort of god-like combat.

“How to Saw Bears”

A bear accidentally starts a saw mill in the middle of the night, which is played for comedic suspense once the narrator figures out that the bear is responsible for the disturbance. The narrator does not want to be eaten by the laconic bear but the mill needs some sort of repair in order to keep the conveyor going.

This is escalating quickly. I think that it’s fair to say that Coransee and Teray are the two children of Rayal and Jansee seen in the prologue. We don’t know a lot about the Pattern, yet, but we do have an idea that there are Patternists, mutes, and Clayarks, and different classes within the Patternists — Outsiders and slaves, though those appear to be effectively the same thing.

So uh sometimes, when you forget your book in your other car, you walk around a nearby bookstore and find the one, first-published book from a series that neither Barnes and Noble have deigned to keep around!!!

“Jim Beckwourth’s Pond: And Some of Its Peculiarities”

This is another goofy Great Plains tall tale and involves something like a cross between a hot spring and a geyser. It’s mildly interesting to Jim but he has to lie in order to get his traveling companions to come see it. In a circumstance of infernal serendipity, it appears as though Jim has the power to make the entire lake EXPLODE.

“Maud’s Papa”

Uh, a dude who I can’t quite call a walking thesaurus sort of accidentally murders his paramour’s father in the middle of a practical joke that she has staged. At the same time he is dumping phrases like “I’ll conciliate your exegesis with a proletarian!” he is forcing a bottle of ink down the old man’s throat.

“Snaking: A Tale of the Frozen Truth”

A tall tale more palatable because we are told up front that the man telling it is a profound liar. We move from men collecting snakes during winter to a snake den with hammocks to his partner making a fire on the top of the rock that heats the den up so that the snakes wake, with the listener only half-paying attention and calling the liar out on inconsistencies.

“Maumee’s Mission”

A modest tall tale of the Great Plains. A group of travelers is exploiting the dumbest of the caravan by way of the optical illusions of distance on the plains. They kind of own everything that he has, but aren’t intending to collect on it. What goes around comes around, though, and they founder on the last wager that they make.

“‘The Following Dorg’”

I appreciate how meta Bierce is with this one. It’s a tall tale except it is less tall and more long. The more he writes, the longer the dog in the text gets, until it becomes so grossly extended that a telegram must be sent to inform the owner at the head what is going on at the dorg’s rear.

“Tony Rollo’s Conclusion”

This is the worst nothing-story so far. The eldest of eight sons is the ultimate idler and does nothing even harder when he is holding any sort of tool. When he turns 40, he reveals that he has been contemplating that, as the eldest brother, he ought to THINK about getting married.

“Following the Sea: A True Story”

I don’t get the ending with what was supposed to have happened to the earth but this is an amusing tall tale where an earthquake makes the ocean race away from the shore. When they chase after it to bathe, the wall of water rolls back in, and they are rescued by a ship that is riding the crest of the wave.

“Pernicketty’s Fright”

A tall tale of the Great Plains where a man named Dan tries to play up the fears of a newbie who hears wolves howling for the first time. It turns out that the joke that they are playing on Ol’ Nick is just as much as on them because the Native American attack that they lead him to believe is imminent actually happens.

“Mrs. Dennison’s Head”

A broad office comedy where a dude is in mourning because, when asked, his wife lost her head. The process of trying to induce him to talk about it without directly asking him is straight out of any office sitcom, with the target completely oblivious. The narrator is forced to lead off his inquiry with “…speaking of decapitation reminds me of something I would like to ask you.”

“The Civil Service in Florida”

A practical joker named Halsey harasses people so that they can’t fall asleep long enough to get any decent rest. This story is about one of his victims, who after a lengthy period of sleep deprivation, engineers a plan to kill Halsey by setting a timed explosion and then leaving after calling Halsey to his house. Except, well, he falls asleep after lighting the taper…

“Converting a Prodigal”

This is a story of two brothers, one who is a miser who steals from the Christmas stockings of his siblings and the other who will not work but has a resultantly suspicious cash inflow. It’s an untenable situation for the family, who despairs of either brother contributing to society in equal parts work and finance. The solution is… pretty ingenious.

“The Early History of Bath”

This is an entirely fictional account of how the hot springs of Bath in Somerset, Wales were discovered and has an example of Bierce’s Grotesque meandering with a paragraph of various social dramas going on at the time. Bierce promises that it will aid in contextualizing Prince Bladud’s activities and because it is Bierce we know that nothing could be further from the truth.

“The Grateful Bear: or, The Advantage of Shutting the Door”

Starts out by retelling the story of Androcles and the lion, which includes the cannibalism of infants, and then moves on to a villainous bear to rival the ursa from “Juniper”. This is another shaggy dog story from Bierce, the punchline already having been delivered in the subtitle, and is a worthy groan.

“A Tale of the Bosphorus”

Uh, this is a vaguely Arabian Nights-flavored story about three girls, two of whom literally take their cues from being the wicked stepsisters in “Cinderella”. The humor in this story rests upon the Cinderella-analogue conspiring with the Grand Vizier to have her sisters drowned along with the rest of the Sultan’s undesired harem girls. It’s problematic, to say the least.

“Feodora”

Um. This is Bierce at his least reliable as a narrator. This yarn is a morass of contradictions told seemingly as informed by the mother’s point of view given how thoroughly it harps on how selfish Feodora is for not giving her all of what she may have earned through begging.

“No Charge For Attendance”

Another story about German peasants. This time the Arabian Nights-inspired farmer attempts to summon a genie from his candle snuffer. Eventually, the genie shows up, but he doesn’t talk and can’t grant any wish except to cook and when he does so it is only really to feed himself. The explanation is, uh, not that outlandish.

“Seafaring: To Be Dramatized For the California Theater”

I have thought that some of these Grotesques were shaggy dog story adjacent but this is shaggy dog all the way. I was not emotionally prepared for this one. You start out with the narrator looking to sail from Sacramento to San Francisco, having to settle for a box instead of a steamboat, and then comes the Blossom Rock aside, and I can’t even

“Four Jacks and a Knave”

Hans and Jo make for a fun comedic duo. Hans is Phillip J. Fry dumb but it’s hard to feel sorry for Jo duping him with the donkeys as Bierce takes great pains to show that he is absolutely worthless as a miller, improbably mixing bone and glass and meat into the grain and still making a living by virtue of having a monopoly on his industry.

“Juniper”

This could be a tale of the Wild West but for the fact that it’s set in Norway. A dwarf named Juniper, who behaves like a cartoon character, is constantly plagued by a bear. Everyone loves the dwarf and no one begrudges him that the bear that chases him eats the people Juniper uses as human shields. This is absurd, but it’s the only way to get Bierce’s surprise twist to make sense.

“A Tale of Spanish Vengeance”

An endless parade of horrible puns and comically overwrought drama and a cultural stereotype about Spaniards that I have never read / heard before. This whole thing leads up to a joke about the New York Herald but I have no idea whether it is supposed to be at the Herald’s expense. With Bierce, anything is possible. For all I know, the same goes with the stereotype.