Awake and Rehearse (1929) "They never can get rid of the storyteller, never have been able to and never will," so declared Louis Bromfield, and in Awake and Rehearse he uses all the subtlety of his sardonic pen to create characters with acute observation and stories of careful craftsmanship. This collection of short stories won the O. Henry Award in 1929. With slice-of-life stories of the decaying aristocracy of Europe "The Cat That Lived at the Ritz," "Nigel"; contrasted with glimpses of the lives of less pompous types "Mr. Rosie and May," "The Life of Virgie Winters", even touching at times upon the comic in a story which consists entirely of the spoken gossip between two busybodies at a funeral "Aunt Milly Crosses the Bar".