The Missionary Sheriff

• The Missionary Sheriff: Being Incidents in the Life of a Plain Man Who Tried to do His Duty. New York: Harper & Bros, 1897.
• "The Missionary Sheriff." Harper's Monthly, XCII (April 1896): 773-87. Reprinted in The Missionary Sheriff: Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, ed. Charles Dudley Warner (New York, 1902), XXXVII.
• "The Cabinet Organ." Harper's Monthly, XCIII (July 1896), 238-51.
  
• "His Duty." Harper's Monthly, XCIII (September 1896), 612-21. Reprinted in both The Missionary Sheriff and in The Captured Dream​.
  
• "The Hypnotist."  Harper's Monthly, XCIII (October 1896), 678-89.
• "The Next Room." Harper's Monthly, XCIII (November 1896), 914-59.
  
• "The Defeat of Amos Wickliffe." Harper's Monthly, XCIII (December 1896), 86-94.

In 1895, Alice's investments paid high dividends and her writing earned her more than $3,600. Henry Mills Alden had bought a short story, "The Missionary Sheriff," for $620, the most she had ever received for a story, and it was her first to be published in Harper's Magazine. Shortly after it was accepted, Harper and Brothers sent a letter asking that she write a series of short stories to be published first in Harper's Magazine and then to be issued by the publishing house in a single volume in 1897.  --McMichael, p. 145. 

McMichael's comments are primarily about the sale of the stories and how they mark Thanet's rising success. Rightfully so--the stories are amusing and heart-warming, but there's not a lot of substance here. In fact, themes of absent mothers whose pictures are hidden in bibles repeat, and the focus of the six-story cycle is primarily on Amos Wickliff, who "Alice had tried to show a western character's life and attitudes, and into her hero, Sheriff Amos Wickliff, she put all the masculine virtues she could muster for a rough man" (McMichael, p. 150).

Items of note:

• Missionary: The title story is one where Amos befriends a dying prisoner at his jail when he discovers the man's mother's picture. Amos is an orphan with a clear allegiance to his parents, both of whom appear in his quarters in expensive portraits. He often talks to those portraits and seeks their counsel.  Perhaps this is why he's sympathetic to old Margaret Clark Cary in "The Next Room"--he has his own ghostly family. At any rate, after Ned/Edgar pleads his mother should never know his criminal identity, Amos sets out to make the man better, showing him how to truly honor his mother. The cycle of the story ends, of course, with Amos reaping the reward of marrying Ned's old fiancee Ruth in "The Defeat of Amos Wickliff."
• Spiritualism: Two stories, "The Hypnotist" and "The Next Room" focus on the spiritualist movement popular in the late 19th century. In one, a woman is manipulated by a con man into giving him money and marrying him. Amos Wickliff happens to be visiting the town and sees the hypnotist's picture and realizes he's got a bounty on his head, so he intervenes.  In "The Next Room" the loan shark in town, known as "Old Twenty Percent" turns out to be a sweet older lady who sees her dead relatives. She's been having little seances at home and Wickliff sees no harm in her little rituals. When she "disappears" it turns out she was merely worried that her nephew Allerton, came looking for her to return her to the asylum. The story has a happy ending with Allerton agreeing not to harass his aunt.
• Immigrant portrayals: There are multiple attempts at Irish and German accents. The portrayal of German and Irish immigrants doesn't seem awful, even if it is the stereotype of the Irish charwoman and German magistrate. The racism that is here is reserved for Italians and native Americans as whisky-loving savages.
• There is one Arkansas woman--she's the wife of a fugitive photographer that Amos helps in a skirmish with native Americans. 
• My highlights and brief notes.