Shop H.E. Bates Online
ID
b58
Title
Time
Genre
Story
Page Count
8
Word Count
1680
Publisher
New Statesman and Nation
Story
Publication Year
1932
Document Types
Comic Fiction
Topics
Age, Tricksters

Two feeble old men are gently tricked by their friend Duke in regard to a watch that runs on the "lectric" of his body.

Duke, a "masterpiece of a man" with "the secret of a devilish perpetual youth," shares qualities of other tricksters and remarkably fit men in Bates's works.

In the New Statesman and Nation (August 20, 1932), The Story (April 1933), The Best Short Stories of 1933 (1933), The Best British short stories of 1933 (1933), The Woman Who Had Imagination and Other Stories (1934), Country Tales (1938), Country Tales (1940), Seven by Five (1963), A Month by the Lake & Other Stories (1987). Reprinted in The Best Short Stories of 1933 (London: Cape, 1933), The Best British Short Stories of 1933 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1933), Short Stories by Modern Writers (1936), A Day Saved and Other Modern Stories (1983).