A Wizard's Touch, and a Dog With Opinions
THIS WEEK ON SHORT STORY VERSUS
A Wizard's Touch, and a Dog With Opinions
Posted July 20, 2026 · New this week
I'm going to start doing this every week — a quick post to point you toward the newest stories we've added across the podcasts, so nothing good slips by you. Consider this the first one. And it's a nice pair to start with, because the two stories we put up last week couldn't be more different: one's a tender little romance, and the other is narrated by a dog who thinks most people are ridiculous.
NEW ON LITREADING“The Wizard's Touch” by Alice Brown
Alice Brown doesn't get read as much as she should these days, which is exactly why I love putting her on LitReading. She was a New England writer through and through — born in 1857, still working well into the twentieth century — and she had that gift for taking ordinary people and the ordinary ache of wanting something and making it feel like it matters enormously, because of course it does.
“The Wizard's Touch” is a good example. Jerome Wilmer, a painter, comes home from a long stretch abroad and finds out the woman he loves has gone and gotten herself engaged to somebody else while he was away. So now he's got a decision to make and not much time to make it in. It's a romance, and an unabashed one, but it moves — there's a real question humming underneath it about whether a person can reach in and change the course of somebody else's heart, and whether they've got any business trying.
It's a lovely one to listen to, in particular. The feelings are close to the surface, the way they are in the best old stories, and there's something about hearing that read aloud that lands differently than reading it on the page. Give it twenty minutes and see.
KICKING OFF HUMOROUS“Memoirs of a Yellow Dog” by O. Henry
This one's a bit of a milestone for us, because we're just getting the Humorous podcast off the ground — and if you're going to launch a show built around funny stories, you could do a whole lot worse than O. Henry. Longtime listeners might remember “Memoirs of a Yellow Dog” from way back when it ran on LitReading; we've dusted it off and given it a proper home on Humorous, where it honestly belongs.
Here's the setup: the whole thing is told by the dog. He's a yellow mutt living in a New York flat with a doting wife who smothers him with baby-talk and cutesy names, and a mild, hen-pecked husband he actually feels sorry for. Published back in 1903, and it has not aged a day — the humor is dry, a little sardonic, and completely on the dog's side. Without giving it away, let's just say the dog decides the two of them, man and mutt, deserve better, and does something about it.
It's the perfect first pick for a comedy show: short, sharp, and funnier than a story that old has any right to be. If you've never heard O. Henry read well, this is a great place to find out what the fuss is about.
That's the two of them for this week. More Humorous is on the way as we build the show out — so if a wisecracking dog is your speed, stick around. I'll see you back here next week with whatever we've added next.