Seven Smiles and a Few Fibs

Issued as part of Neely's "Prismatic Library." A collection of short fiction, dedicated to William Randolph Hearst, written by a journalist associated with the Hearst papers in New York and San Francisco. All but one of the nine "Fibs" are sensational, fantastic or criminous stories; "The Protoplasmic Misadventures of Hans Jorgensen," a science fiction horror story of the discovery of jelly-like living prehistoric organic matter preserved on an uncharted volcanic island in the North Pacific near the Aleutian Islands; "Down to the Medulla," a vivisectionist experimenting with the human brain turns a condemned criminal into a living vegetable; "Taken Under Advisement," a clever tale of a killer who almost outwits the law; "Old Lick's Ghost: A California Christmas Story," a rationalized ghost story; "If Thine Enemy Thirst," a horrific revenge story set in a lifeboat at sea after a shipwreck; "He Kept the Engagement," a romantic courtship story; "The Magic Mirror," a sailor gives his sweetheart an ancient Persian mirror in which she sees his fatal love affair with another man's wife; "How I Had 'Em! A Blue-Ribbon Romance," a hallucinating drunk is tormented by the Devil and his Imps; "To Freeze Out England," a humorous tall tale in which the Fenians plot to change the climate in England by blocking the Gulf Stream; the project is stalled due to lack of money to buy bricks. Stories and sketches in the style of Bierce, Morrow and Milne, although not as polished.