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Update headers to new standard
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Alex Cabal
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@namespace epub "http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops";
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@namespace xml "http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace";
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span[epub|type~="subtitle"]{
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display: block;
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font-weight: normal;
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}
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blockquote[xml|lang]{
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font-style: italic;
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}
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@ -12,27 +12,42 @@
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<p>To prove it, here is one that we offer $10,000 to any man and $15,000 to any woman who guesses the mystery before the last chapter.</p>
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<p>The synopsis of the story is alone given, as literary style is not our object—we want mystery.</p>
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<section id="a-guess-proof-mystery-story-1" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title">Chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">I</span></h3>
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<h3>
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<span epub:type="label">Chapter</span>
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<span epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</span>
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</h3>
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<p>Judge Smith, a highly esteemed citizen of Plunkville, is found murdered in his bed at his home. He has been stabbed with a pair of scissors, poisoned with “rough on rats.” His throat has been cut with an ivory handled razor, an artery in his arm has been opened, and he has been shot full of buckshot from a double-barreled gun.</p>
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<p>The coroner is summoned and the room examined. On the ceiling is a bloody footprint, and on the floor are found a lady’s lace handkerchief, embroidered with the initials “<abbr class="name">J. B.</abbr>,” a package of cigarettes and a ham sandwich. The coroner renders a verdict of suicide.</p>
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</section>
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<section id="a-guess-proof-mystery-story-2" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title">Chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">II</span></h3>
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<h3>
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<span epub:type="label">Chapter</span>
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<span epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</span>
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</h3>
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<p>The judge leaves a daughter, Mabel, aged eighteen, and ravishingly lovely. The night before the murder she exhibited a revolver and an axe in the principal saloon in town and declared her intention of “doing up” the old man. The judge has his life insured for $100,000 in her favor. Nobody suspects her of the crime.</p>
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<p>Mabel is engaged to a young man named Charlie, who is seen on the night of the murder by several citizens climbing out the judge’s window with a bloody razor and a shotgun in his hand. Society gives Charlie the cold shoulder.</p>
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<p>A tramp is run over by a street car and before dying confesses to having committed the murder, and at the judge’s funeral his brother, Colonel Smith, breaks down and acknowledges having killed the judge in order to get his watch. Mabel sends to Chicago and employs a skilled detective to work up the case.</p>
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</section>
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<section id="a-guess-proof-mystery-story-3" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title">Chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">III</span></h3>
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<h3>
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<span epub:type="label">Chapter</span>
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<span epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">III</span>
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</h3>
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<p>A beautiful strange lady dressed in mourning comes to Plunkville and registers at the hotel as Jane Bumgartner. (The initials on the handkerchief!)</p>
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<p>The next day a Chinaman is found who denies having killed the judge, and is arrested by the detective. The strange lady meets Charlie on the street, and, on smelling the smoke from his cigarette, faints. Mabel discards him and engages herself to the Chinaman.</p>
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</section>
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<section id="a-guess-proof-mystery-story-4" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title">Chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">IV</span></h3>
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<h3>
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<span epub:type="label">Chapter</span>
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<span epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">IV</span>
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</h3>
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<p>While the Chinaman is being tried for murder, Jane Bumgartner testifies that she saw the detective murder Judge Smith at the instance of the minister who conducted the funeral, and that Mabel is Charlie’s stepmother. The Chinaman is about to confess when footsteps are heard approaching. The next chapter will be the last, and it is safe to say that no one will find it easy to guess the ending of the story. To show how difficult this feat is, the last chapter is now given.</p>
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</section>
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<section id="a-guess-proof-mystery-story-5" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title">Chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">V</span></h3>
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<h3>
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<span epub:type="label">Chapter</span>
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<span epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">V</span>
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</h3>
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<p>The footsteps prove to be those of Thomas <abbr class="name">R.</abbr> Hefflebomer of Washington Territory, who introduces positive proof of having murdered the judge during a fit of mental aberration, and Mabel marries a man named Tompkins, whom she met two years later at Hot Springs.</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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@ -7,10 +7,10 @@
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<article id="a-professional-secret" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">
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<span>A Professional Secret</span>
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<span epub:type="subtitle">The Story of a Maid Made Over</span>
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</h2>
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<hgroup>
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Professional Secret</h2>
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<h3 epub:type="subtitle">The Story of a Maid Made Over</h3>
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</hgroup>
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<p><abbr>Dr.</abbr> Satterfield Prince, physician to the leisure class, looked at his watch. It indicated five minutes to twelve. At the stroke of the hour would expire the morning term set apart for the reception of his patients in his handsome office apartments. And then the young woman attendant ushered in from the waiting-room the last unit of the wealthy and fashionable gathering that had come to patronize his skill.</p>
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<p><abbr>Dr.</abbr> Prince turned, his watch still in hand, his manner courteous, but seeming to invite promptness and brevity in the interview. The last patient was a middle-aged lady, richly dressed, with an amiable and placid face. When she spoke her voice revealed the drawling, musical slur and intonation of the South. She had come, she leisurely explained, to bespeak the services of <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Prince in the case of her daughter, who was possessed of a most mysterious affliction. And then, femininely, she proceeded to exhaustively diagnose the affliction, informing the physician with a calm certitude of its origin and nature.</p>
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<p>The diagnosis advanced by the lady—<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Galloway Rankin—was one so marvelously strange and singular in its conception that <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Prince, accustomed as he was to the conceits and vagaries of wealthy malingerers, was actually dumfounded. The following is the matter of <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Rankin’s statement, briefly reported:</p>
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@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
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<article id="bestseller" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">Bestseller</h2>
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<section id="bestseller-1" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">I</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</h3>
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<p>One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh—well, I had to go there on business.</p>
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<p>My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses cut with square yokes, with lace insertion, and dotted veils, who refused to have the windows raised. Then there was the usual number of men who looked as if they might be in almost any business and going almost anywhere. Some students of human nature can look at a man in a Pullman and tell you where he is from, his occupation and his stations in life, both flag and social; but I never could. The only way I can correctly judge a fellow-traveller is when the train is held up by robbers, or when he reaches at the same time I do for the last towel in the dressing-room of the sleeper.</p>
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<p>The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on the windowsill off to the left knee of my trousers. I removed it with an air of apology. The temperature was eighty-eight. One of the dotted-veiled ladies demanded the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke loudly of Interlaken. I leaned back idly in chair <abbr>No.</abbr> 7, and looked with the tepidest curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the back of <abbr>No.</abbr> 9.</p>
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@ -19,7 +19,7 @@
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<p>During my acquaintance with him in the City of Diurnal Night I had never known his views on life, romance, literature, and ethics. We had browsed, during our meetings, on local topics, and then parted, after Château Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage-pudding, and coffee (hey, there!—with milk separate). Now I was to get more of his ideas. By way of facts, he told me that business had picked up since the party conventions, and that he was going to get off at Coketown.</p>
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</section>
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<section id="bestseller-2" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">II</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</h3>
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<p>“Say,” said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with the toe of his right shoe, “did you ever read one of these bestsellers? I mean the kind where the hero is an American swell—sometimes even from Chicago—who falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is travelling under an alias, and follows her to her father’s kingdom or principality? I guess you have. They’re all alike. Sometimes this going-away masher is a Washington newspaper correspondent, and sometimes he is a Van Something from New York, or a Chicago wheat-broker worthy fifty millions. But he’s always ready to break into the king row of any foreign country that sends over their queens and princesses to try the new plush seats on the Big Four or the <abbr class="eoc">B. and O.</abbr> There doesn’t seem to be any other reason in the book for their being here.</p>
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<p>“Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home, as I said, and finds out who she is. He meets her on the <i xml:lang="de">corso</i> or the <i xml:lang="de">strasse</i> one evening and gives us ten pages of conversation. She reminds him of the difference in their stations, and that gives him a chance to ring in three solid pages about America’s uncrowned sovereigns. If you’d take his remarks and set ’em to music, and then take the music away from ’em, they’d sound exactly like one of George Cohan’s songs.</p>
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<p>“Well, you know how it runs on, if you’ve read any of ’em—he slaps the king’s Swiss bodyguards around like everything whenever they get in his way. He’s a great fencer, too. Now, I’ve known of some Chicago men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard of any fencers coming from there. He stands on the first landing of the royal staircase in Castle Schutzenfestenstein with a gleaming rapier in his hand, and makes a Baltimore broil of six platoons of traitors who come to massacre the said king. And then he has to fight duels with a couple of chancellors, and foil a plot by four Austrian archdukes to seize the kingdom for a gasoline-station.</p>
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@ -37,7 +37,7 @@
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<p>“Or plain business men with aristocracy high above ’em,” added Pescud. “It don’t jibe. People are divided into classes, whether we admit it or not, and it’s everybody’s impulse to stick to their own class. They do it, too. I don’t see why people go to work and buy hundreds of thousands of books like that. You don’t see or hear of any such didoes and capers in real life.”</p>
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</section>
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<section id="bestseller-3" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">III</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">III</h3>
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<p>“Well, John,” said I, “I haven’t read a bestseller in a long time. Maybe I’ve had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?”</p>
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<p>“Bully,” said Pescud, brightening at once. “I’ve had my salary raised twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I’ve bought a neat slice of real estate out in the East End, and have run up a house on it. Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock. Oh, I’m in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter who’s elected!”</p>
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<p>“Met your affinity yet, John?” I asked.</p>
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@ -107,7 +107,7 @@
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<p>“And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows.”</p>
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</section>
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<section id="bestseller-4" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">IV</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">IV</h3>
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<p>“Coketown!” droned the porter, making his way through the slowing car.</p>
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<p>Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely promptness of an old traveller.</p>
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<p>“I married her a year ago,” said John. “I told you I built a house in the East End. The belted—I mean the colonel—is there, too. I find him waiting at the gate whenever I get back from a trip to hear any new story I might have picked up on the road.”</p>
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<p>As usual, I became aware that the Man from Bombay had already written the story; but as he had compressed it to an eight-word sentence, I have become an expansionist, and have quoted his phrase above, with apologies to him and best regards to <em>Terence</em>.</p>
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</section>
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<section id="helping-the-other-fellow-2" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">II</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</h3>
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<p>“Don’t you ever have a desire to go back to the land of derby hats and starched collars?” I asked him. “You seem to be a handy man and a man of action,” I continued, “and I am sure I could find you a comfortable job somewhere in the States.”</p>
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<p>Ragged, shiftless, barefooted, a confirmed eater of the lotus, William Trotter had pleased me much, and I hated to see him gobbled up by the tropics.</p>
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<p>“I’ve no doubt you could,” he said, idly splitting the bark from a section of sugarcane. “I’ve no doubt you could do much for me. If every man could do as much for himself as he can for others, every country in the world would be holding millenniums instead of centennials.”</p>
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<p>“ ‘My dear <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Trotter,’ says he, ‘surely I’ve known you long enough to tell you you are a liar. Every man must have his own particular weakness, and his own particular strength in other things. Now, you will buy me a drink of rum, and we will call on President Gomez.’ ”</p>
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</section>
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<section id="helping-the-other-fellow-3" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">III</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">III</h3>
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<p>“Well, sir,” Trotter went on, “we walks the four miles out, through a virgin conservatory of palms and ferns and other roof-garden products, to the president’s summer White House. It was blue, and reminded you of what you see on the stage in the third act, which they describe as ‘same as the first’ on the programs.</p>
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<p>“There was more than fifty people waiting outside the iron fence that surrounded the house and grounds. There was generals and agitators and épergnes in gold-laced uniforms, and citizens in diamonds and Panama hats—all waiting to get an audience with the Royal Five-Card Draw. And in a kind of a summerhouse in front of the mansion we could see a burnt-sienna man eating breakfast out of gold dishes and taking his time. I judged that the crowd outside had come out for their morning orders and requests, and was afraid to intrude.</p>
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<p>“But <abbr class="name">C.</abbr> Wainwright wasn’t. The gate was open, and he walked inside and up to the president’s table as confident as a man who knows the head waiter in a fifteen-cent restaurant. And I went with him, because I had only seventy-five cents, and there was nothing else to do.</p>
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<p>“It’s her!” said William Trotter, looking. “She’s come back! I’m obliged; but I can’t take the job. Thanks, just the same. Ain’t it funny how we can’t do nothing for ourselves, but we can do wonders for the other fellow? You was about to get me with your financial proposition; but we’ve all got our weak points. Timotea’s mine. And, say!” Trotter had turned to leave, but he retraced the step or two that he had taken. “I like to have left you without saying goodbye,” said he. “It kind of rattles you when they go away unexpected for a month and come back the same way. Shake hands. So long! Say, do you remember them gunshots we heard a while ago up at the cuartel? Well, I knew what they was, but I didn’t mention it. It was Clifford Wainwright being shot by a squad of soldiers against a stone wall for giving away secrets of state to that Nicamala republic. Oh, yes, it was rum that did it. He backslided and got his. I guess we all have our weak points, and can’t do much toward helping ourselves. Mine’s waiting for me. I’d have liked to have that job with your brother, but—we’ve all got our weak points. So long!”</p>
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</section>
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<section id="helping-the-other-fellow-4" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">IV</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">IV</h3>
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<p>A big black Carib carried me on his back through the surf to the ship’s boat. On the way the purser handed me a letter that he had brought for me at the last moment from the post-office in Aguas Frescas. It was from my brother. He requested me to meet him at the <abbr>St.</abbr> Charles Hotel in New Orleans and accept a position with his house—in either cotton, sugar, or sheetings, and with five thousand dollars a year as my salary.</p>
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<p>When I arrived at the Crescent City I hurried away—far away from the <abbr>St.</abbr> Charles to a dim <i xml:lang="fr">chambre garnie</i> in Bienville Street. And there, looking down from my attic window from time to time at the old, yellow, absinthe house across the street, I wrote this story to buy my bread and butter.</p>
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<p>“Can thim that helps others help thimselves?”</p>
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<article id="jimmy-hayes-and-muriel" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">Jimmy Hayes and Muriel</h2>
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<section id="jimmy-hanes-and-muriel-1" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">I</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</h3>
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<p>Supper was over, and there had fallen upon the camp the silence that accompanies the rolling of cornhusk cigarettes. The water hole shone from the dark earth like a patch of fallen sky. Coyotes yelped. Dull thumps indicated the rocking-horse movements of the hobbled ponies as they moved to fresh grass. A half-troop of the Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers were distributed about the fire.</p>
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<p>A well-known sound—the fluttering and scraping of chaparral against wooden stirrups—came from the thick brush above the camp. The rangers listened cautiously. They heard a loud and cheerful voice call out reassuringly:</p>
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<p>“Brace up, Muriel, old girl, we’re ’most there now! Been a long ride for ye, ain’t it, ye old antediluvian handful of animated carpet-tacks? Hey, now, quit a tryin’ to kiss me! Don’t hold on to my neck so tight—this here paint hoss ain’t any too shore-footed, let me tell ye. He’s liable to dump us both off if we don’t watch out.”</p>
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<p>“Well, dang my hide!” said the other ranger. “The little cuss knows you. Never thought them insects had that much sense!”</p>
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</section>
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<section id="jimmy-hanes-and-muriel-2" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">II</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</h3>
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<p>Jimmy Hayes became a favourite in the ranger camp. He had an endless store of good-nature, and a mild, perennial quality of humour that is well adapted to camp life. He was never without his horned frog. In the bosom of his shirt during rides, on his knee or shoulder in camp, under his blankets at night, the ugly little beast never left him.</p>
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<p>Jimmy was a humourist of a type that prevails in the rural South and West. Unskilled in originating methods of amusing or in witty conceptions, he had hit upon a comical idea and clung to it reverently. It had seemed to Jimmy a very funny thing to have about his person, with which to amuse his friends, a tame horned frog with a red ribbon around its neck. As it was a happy idea, why not perpetuate it?</p>
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<p>The sentiments existing between Jimmy and the frog cannot be exactly determined. The capability of the horned frog for lasting affection is a subject upon which we have had no symposiums. It is easier to guess Jimmy’s feelings. Muriel was his <span xml:lang="fr">chef d’oeuvre</span> of wit, and as such he cherished her. He caught flies for her, and shielded her from sudden northers. Yet his care was half selfish, and when the time came she repaid him a thousand fold. Other Muriels have thus overbalanced the light attentions of other Jimmies.</p>
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<p>Days, weeks, and months went by, and still that little cloud of unforgotten cowardice hung above the camp.</p>
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</section>
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<section id="jimmy-hanes-and-muriel-3" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">III</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">III</h3>
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<p>Nearly a year afterward—after many camping grounds and many hundreds of miles guarded and defended—Lieutenant Manning, with almost the same detachment of men, was sent to a point only a few miles below their old camp on the river to look after some smuggling there. One afternoon, while they were riding through a dense mesquite flat, they came upon a patch of open hog-wallow prairie. There they rode upon the scene of an unwritten tragedy.</p>
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<p>In a big hog-wallow lay the skeletons of three Mexicans. Their clothing alone served to identify them. The largest of the figures had once been Sebastiano Saldar. His great, costly sombrero, heavy with gold ornamentation—a hat famous all along the Rio Grande—lay there pierced by three bullets. Along the ridge of the hog-wallow rested the rusting Winchesters of the Mexicans—all pointing in the same direction.</p>
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<p>The rangers rode in that direction for fifty yards. There, in a little depression of the ground, with his rifle still bearing upon the three, lay another skeleton. It had been a battle of extermination. There was nothing to identify the solitary defender. His clothing—such as the elements had left distinguishable—seemed to be of the kind that any ranchman or cowboy might have worn.</p>
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<article id="lord-oakhursts-curse" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">Lord Oakhurst’s Curse</h2>
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<section id="lord-oakhursts-curse-1" epub:type="chapter">
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<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">I</h3>
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<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</h3>
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<p>Lord Oakhurst lay dying in the oak chamber in the eastern wing of Oakhurst Castle. Through the open window in the calm of the summer evening, came the sweet fragrance of the early violets and budding trees, and to the dying man it seemed as if earth’s loveliness and beauty were never so apparent as on this bright June day, his last day of life.</p>
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<p>His young wife, whom he loved with a devotion and strength that the presence of the king of terrors himself could not alter, moved about the apartment, weeping and sorrowful, sometimes arranging the sick man’s pillow and inquiring of him in low, mournful tones if anything could be done to give him comfort, and again, with stifled sobs, eating some chocolate caramels which she carried in the pocket of her apron. The servants went to and fro with that quiet and subdued tread which prevails in a house where death is an expected guest, and even the crash of broken china and shivered glass, which announced their approach, seemed to fall upon the ear with less violence and sound than usual.</p>
|
||||
<p>Lord Oakhurst was thinking of days gone by, when he wooed and won his beautiful young wife, who was then but a charming and innocent girl. How clearly and minutely those scenes rose up at the call of his memory. He seemed to be standing once more beneath the old chestnut grove where they had plighted their troth in the twilight under the stars; while the rare fragrance of the June roses and the smell of supper came gently by on the breeze. There he had told her his love; how that his whole happiness and future joy lay in the hope that he might win her for a bride; that if she would trust her future to his care the devotedness of his lifetime should be hers, and his only thought would be to make her life one long day of sunshine and peanut candy.</p>
|
||||
@ -17,7 +17,7 @@
|
||||
<p>And now he was dying. In a few short hours his spirit would rise up at the call of the Destroyer and, quitting his poor, weak, earthly frame, would go forth into that dim and dreaded Unknown Land, and solve with certainty that Mystery which revealeth itself not to mortal man.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="lord-oakhursts-curse-2" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">II</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</h3>
|
||||
<p>A carriage drove rapidly up the avenue and stopped at the door. Sir Everhard FitzArmond, the famous London physician, who had been telegraphed for, alighted and quickly ascended the marble steps. Lady Oakhurst met him at the door, her lovely face expressing great anxiety and grief. “Oh, Sir Everhard, I am so glad you have come. He seems to be sinking rapidly. Did you bring the cream almonds I mentioned in the telegram?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Sir Everhard did not reply, but silently handed her a package, and, slipping a couple of cloves into his mouth, ascended the stairs that led to Lord Oakhurst’s apartment. Lady Oakhurst followed.</p>
|
||||
<p>Sir Everhard approached the bedside of his patient and laid his hand gently on this sick man’s diagnosis. A shade of feeling passed over his professional countenance as he gravely and solemnly pronounced these words: “Madam, your husband has croaked.”</p>
|
||||
@ -26,10 +26,10 @@
|
||||
<p>Sir Everhard glanced quickly around the room. No one was in sight. Dropping the will, he rapidly transferred some valuable ornaments and rare specimens of gold and silver filigree work from the centre table to his pockets, and rang the bell for the servants.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="lord-oakhursts-curse-3" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span epub:type="z3998:roman">III</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Curse</span>
|
||||
</h3>
|
||||
<hgroup>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">III</h3>
|
||||
<h4 epub:type="title">The Curse</h4>
|
||||
</hgroup>
|
||||
<p>Sir Everhard FitzArmond descended the stairway of Oakhurst Castle and passed out into the avenue that led from the doorway to the great iron gates of the park. Lord Oakhurst had been a great sportsman during his life and always kept a well-stocked kennel of curs, which now rushed out from their hiding places and with loud yelps sprang upon the physician, burying their fangs in his lower limbs and seriously damaging his apparel.</p>
|
||||
<p>Sir Everhard, startled out of his professional dignity and usual indifference to human suffering, by the personal application of feeling, gave vent to a most horrible and blighting <b>curse</b> and ran with great swiftness to his carriage and drove off toward the city.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -7,10 +7,10 @@
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="reconciliation" epub:type="volume se:short-story z3998:drama">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span>Reconciliation</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">A One-Act Drama</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<hgroup>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Reconciliation</h2>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="subtitle">A One-Act Drama</h3>
|
||||
</hgroup>
|
||||
<div epub:type="z3998:dramatis-personae">
|
||||
<header>
|
||||
<p>Dramatis Personae</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
|
||||
<article id="schools-and-schools" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Schools and Schools</h2>
|
||||
<section id="schools-and-schools-1" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">I</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</h3>
|
||||
<p>Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a downtown broker, so rich that he could afford to walk—for his health—a few blocks in the direction of his office every morning, and then call a cab.</p>
|
||||
<p>He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert—Cyril Scott could play him nicely—who was becoming a successful painter as fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member of the household was Barbara Ross, a step-niece. Man is born to trouble; so, as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the burdens of others.</p>
|
||||
<p>Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a floral bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old Jerome’s money in a state of high commotion. But at this point complications must be introduced.</p>
|
||||
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Take the valise, please,” said Nevada. “It weighs a million pounds. It’s got samples from six of dad’s old mines in it,” she explained to Barbara. “I calculate they’d assay about nine cents to the thousand tons, but I promised him to bring them along.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="schools-and-schools-2" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">II</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</h3>
|
||||
<p>It is a common custom to refer to the usual complication between one man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man and a nobleman, or—well, any of those problems—as the triangle. But they are never unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles—never equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada Warren, she and Gilbert and Barbara Ross lined up into such a figurative triangle; and of that triangle Barbara formed the hypotenuse.</p>
|
||||
<p>One morning old Jerome was lingering long after breakfast over the dullest morning paper in the city before setting forth to his downtown flytrap. He had become quite fond of Nevada, finding in her much of his dead brother’s quiet independence and unsuspicious frankness.</p>
|
||||
<p>A maid brought in a note for Miss Nevada Warren.</p>
|
||||
@ -50,7 +50,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“No, I won’t bother about that,” said Nevada, gayly. “Gilbert will understand—he always does. I never rode in an automobile in my life; but I’ve paddled a canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost Horse Canyon, and if it’s any livelier than that I’d like to know!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="schools-and-schools-3" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">III</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">III</h3>
|
||||
<p>Two months are supposed to have elapsed.</p>
|
||||
<p>Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It was a good place for her. Many places are provided in the world where men and women may repair for the purpose of extricating themselves from divers difficulties. There are cloisters, wailing-places, watering-places, confessionals, hermitages, lawyer’s offices, beauty parlors, airships, and studies; and the greatest of these are studies.</p>
|
||||
<p>It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover that it is the longest side of a triangle. But it’s a long line that has no turning.</p>
|
||||
@ -84,7 +84,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Well,” said Barbara, “this is what it says: ‘Dearest Nevada—Come to my studio at twelve o’clock tonight. Do not fail.’ ” Barbara rose and dropped the note in Nevada’s lap. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said, “that I knew. It isn’t like Gilbert. There must be some mistake. Just consider that I am ignorant of it, will you, dear? I must go upstairs now, I have such a headache. I’m sure I don’t understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="schools-and-schools-4" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">IV</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">IV</h3>
|
||||
<p>Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara’s door close upstairs. The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out into the snowstorm. Gilbert Warren’s studio was six squares away.</p>
|
||||
<p>By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the city from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot deep on the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling-ladders against the walls of the besieged town. The Avenue was as quiet as a street in Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like white-winged gulls over a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motorcars—sustaining the comparison—hissed through the foaming waves like submarine boats on their jocund, perilous journeys.</p>
|
||||
<p>Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She looked up at the ragged sierras of cloud-capped buildings that rose above the streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray, drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.</p>
|
||||
@ -118,7 +118,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Pounding their uncertain way upstairs, the feet of Jack, the somnolent, and Agnes, the grateful, were heard.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="schools-and-schools-5" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">V</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">V</h3>
|
||||
<p>When <abbr>Mr.</abbr> and <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Gilbert Warren were spinning softly homeward in a closed carriage, after the ceremony, Gilbert said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote you in the letter that you received tonight?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Fire away!” said his bride.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -7,10 +7,10 @@
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="simmons-saturday-night" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span>Simmon’s Saturday Night</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">How a Guileless Cattle Man Saw the Sights in Houston</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<hgroup>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Simmon’s Saturday Night</h2>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="subtitle">How a Guileless Cattle Man Saw the Sights in Houston</h3>
|
||||
</hgroup>
|
||||
<p>One fine Saturday afternoon a young man got off the 9:10 <abbr class="time">p.m.</abbr> Katy train at the Houston depot, and looked about him in rather a bewildered way. He was deliriously pastoral in his appearance, and presented an aspect almost as rural as that of the young countryman upon the stage as depicted by our leading comedians. He wore a very long black coat of the cut that has perpetuated the name of the late Prince Albert, such as is seen on Sundays at country churches, a pair of pantaloons too short for his somewhat lengthy limbs, and a wondrously tied scarf of deep crimson spotted with green. His face was smoothly shaven, and wore a look of deep wonder, if not apprehension, and his blue eyes were stretched to their widest as he viewed the sights about him. In his hand he carried a long carpet bag of the old style, made of some shiny substance resembling black oil cloth.</p>
|
||||
<p>This young gentleman climbed nervously upon an electric car that was pointed out to him as going into the center of the city, and held his carpet bag upon his knees, clasping it with both hands, as if he distrusted the other people upon the car.</p>
|
||||
<p>As the car started again with a loud hum and scattering of sparks, he grasped the arm of the seat in such a startled way that the conductor could not repress a smile.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -7,10 +7,10 @@
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="the-good-boy" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span>The Good Boy</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">(Mostly in Words of One Syllable)</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<hgroup>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Good Boy</h2>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="subtitle">(Mostly in Words of One Syllable)</h3>
|
||||
</hgroup>
|
||||
<p>James was a good boy.</p>
|
||||
<p>He would not tease his cat or his dog.</p>
|
||||
<p>He went to school.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -7,12 +7,12 @@
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="the-great-french-detective-in-austin" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span>The Great French Detective, in Austin</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">A Successful Political Intrigue</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<hgroup>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Great French Detective, in Austin</h2>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="subtitle">A Successful Political Intrigue</h3>
|
||||
</hgroup>
|
||||
<section id="the-great-french-detective-in-austin-1" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">I</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</h3>
|
||||
<p>It is not generally known that Tictocq, the famous French detective, was in Austin last week. He registered at the Avenue Hotel under an assumed name, and his quiet and reserved manners singled him out at once for one not to be singled out.</p>
|
||||
<p>No one knows why he came to Austin, but to one or two he vouchsafed the information that his mission was an important one from the French Government.</p>
|
||||
<p>One report is that the French Minister of State has discovered an old statute among the laws of the empire, resulting from a treaty between the Emperor Charlemagne and Governor Roberts which expressly provides for the north gate of the Capital grounds being kept open, but this is merely a conjecture.</p>
|
||||
@ -50,7 +50,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“You can go.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="the-great-french-detective-in-austin-2" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">II</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</h3>
|
||||
<p>The drawing-rooms of one of the most magnificent private residences in Austin are a blaze of lights. Carriages line the streets in front, and from gate to doorway is spread a velvet carpet, on which the delicate feet of the guests may tread.</p>
|
||||
<p>The occasion is the entrée into society of one of the fairest buds in the City of the Violet Crown. The rooms are filled with the culture, the beauty, the youth and fashion of society. Austin society is acknowledged to be the wittiest, the most select, and the highest bred to be found southwest of Kansas City.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Rutabaga <abbr>St.</abbr> Vitus, the hostess, is accustomed to draw around her a circle of talent, and beauty, rarely equalled anywhere. Her evenings come nearer approaching the dignity of a salon than any occasion, except, perhaps, a Tony Faust and Marguerite reception at the Iron Front.</p>
|
||||
@ -82,7 +82,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Tictooq hesitates not. He seizes the professor, throws him upon the floor, tears off his shoes and socks, and escapes with the latter through the open window into the garden.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="the-great-french-detective-in-austin-3" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">III</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">III</h3>
|
||||
<p>Tictocq’s room in the Avenue Hotel.</p>
|
||||
<p>A knock is heard at the door.</p>
|
||||
<p>Tictocq opens it and looks at his watch.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
|
||||
<article id="the-higher-pragmatism" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Higher Pragmatism</h2>
|
||||
<section id="the-higher-pragmatism-1" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">I</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</h3>
|
||||
<p>Where to go for wisdom has become a question of serious import. The ancients are discredited; Plato is boilerplate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is reeling; Aesop has been copyrighted by Indiana; Solomon is too solemn; you couldn’t get anything out of Epictetus with a pick.</p>
|
||||
<p>The ant, which for many years served as a model of intelligence and industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot and a waster of time and effort. The owl today is hooted at. Chautauqua conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. Graybeards give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent hair-restorers. There are typographical errors in the almanacs published by the daily newspapers. College professors have become—</p>
|
||||
<p>But there shall be no personalities.</p>
|
||||
@ -18,7 +18,7 @@
|
||||
<p>But let’s go on with the story.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
<section id="the-higher-pragmatism-2" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">II</h3>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">II</h3>
|
||||
<p>Once upon a time I found a ten-cent magazine lying on a bench in a little city park. Anyhow, that was the amount he asked me for when I sat on the bench next to him. He was a musty, dingy, and tattered magazine, with some queer stories bound in him, I was sure. He turned out to be a scrapbook.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am a newspaper reporter,” I said to him, to try him. “I have been detailed to write up some of the experiences of the unfortunate ones who spend their evenings in this park. May I ask you to what you attribute your downfall in—”</p>
|
||||
<p>I was interrupted by a laugh from my purchase—a laugh so rusty and unpractised that I was sure it had been his first for many a day.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -7,10 +7,10 @@
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="the-legend-of-san-jacinto" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span>The Legend of San Jacinto</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Hermit of the Battle Ground Relates an Ancient Tradition to a <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<hgroup>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Legend of San Jacinto</h2>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="subtitle">The Hermit of the Battle Ground Relates an Ancient Tradition to a <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man</h3>
|
||||
</hgroup>
|
||||
<p>The battle ground of San Jacinto is a historic spot, very dear to those who make the past reputation of Texas a personal matter. A Texan who does not thrill at the mention of the locality where General Sam Houston and other gentlemen named after the counties of Texas, captured Santa Anna and his portable bar and side arms, is a baseborn slave.</p>
|
||||
<p>A few days ago a <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> reporter who has a friend who is a pilot on the tug boat <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Hoodoo Jane</i> went down the bayou to the battle ground with the intention of gathering from some of the old inhabitants a few of the stories and legends that are so plentiful concerning the events that occurred on that memorable spot.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:name.vessel.ship">Hoodoo Jane</i> let the reporter off at the battle ground, which is on the bank of the bayou, and he wandered about under the thick grove of trees and then out upon the low flat country where the famous battle is said to have raged. Down under a little bunch of elm trees was a little cabin, and the reporter wandered thither in the hope of finding an old inhabitant.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -7,10 +7,10 @@
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="the-proem" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span>The Proem</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">By the Carpenter</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<hgroup>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">The Proem</h2>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="subtitle">By the Carpenter</h3>
|
||||
</hgroup>
|
||||
<p>They will tell you in Anchuria, that President Miraflores, of that volatile republic, died by his own hand in the coast town of Coralio; that he had reached thus far in flight from the inconveniences of an imminent revolution; and that one hundred thousand dollars, government funds, which he carried with him in an American leather valise as a souvenir of his tempestuous administration, was never afterward recovered.</p>
|
||||
<p>For a <i xml:lang="es">real</i>, a boy will show you his grave. It is back of the town near a little bridge that spans a mangrove swamp. A plain slab of wood stands at its head. Someone has burned upon the headstone with a hot iron this inscription:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote xml:lang="es">
|
||||
|
||||
@ -7,10 +7,10 @@
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<article id="tracked-to-doom" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span>Tracked to Doom</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud</span>
|
||||
</h2>
|
||||
<hgroup>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Tracked to Doom</h2>
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="subtitle">The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud</h3>
|
||||
</hgroup>
|
||||
<p>’Tis midnight in Paris.</p>
|
||||
<p>A myriad of lamps that line the Champs Élysées and the Rouge et Noir, cast their reflection in the dark waters of the Seine as it flows gloomily past the Place Vendôme and the black walls of the Convent Notadam.</p>
|
||||
<p>The great French capital is astir.</p>
|
||||
|
||||
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Reference in New Issue
Block a user