ABSTRACT
“Elementals” was Benét’s first short story. In allowing it to make its initial book appearance here, he said: “It seems to me one of the very jew decent short stories I’ve ever written.” Many of us, who have liked it for a long time, will go further than that. Anyway, it is the tale which broke this brilliant young man of letters into the big time. He had published The Beginning of Wisdom to some plaudits, but not until “Elementals” appeared under the sponsorship of the late Ray Long, in Cosmopolitan Magazine, did he begin to get the attention which he so magnificently answered with his later work.
