THE ROLLING STONEis a weekly paper published in Austin, Texasevery Saturday and will endeavor to fill along-felt want that does not appear,by the way, to be altogether insatiable at present.THE IDEA ISto fill its pages with matter that will make aheart-rending appeal to every lover ofgood literature, and every person whohas a taste for reading print;and a dollar and a half fora year’s subscription.OUR SPECIAL PREMIUMFor the next thirty days and from that timeon indefinitely, whoever will bring two dollars in cash to The Rolling Stone officewill be entered on the list of subscribers for one year and willhave returned to himon the spotFIFTY CENTS IN CASH
-This the twelfth and final volume of O. Henry’s work gets its title from an early newspaper venture of which he was the head and front. On April 28, 1894, there appeared in Austin, Texas, volume 1, number 3, of The Rolling Stone, with a circulation greatly in excess of that of the only two numbers that had gone before. Apparently the business office was encouraged. The first two issues of one thousand copies each had been bought up. Of the third an edition of six thousand was published and distributed free, so that the business men of Austin, Texas, might know what a good medium was at hand for their advertising. The editor and proprietor and illustrator of The Rolling Stone was Will Porter, incidentally Paying and Receiving Teller in Major Brackenridge’s bank.
-Perhaps the most characteristic feature of the paper was “The Plunkville Patriot,” a page each week—or at least with the regularity of the somewhat uncertain paper itself—purporting to be reprinted from a contemporary journal. The editor of the Plunkville Patriot was Colonel Aristotle Jordan, unrelenting enemy of his enemies. When the Colonel’s application for the postmastership in Plunkville is ignored, his columns carry a bitter attack on the administration at Washington. With the public weal at heart, the Patriot announces that “there is a dangerous hole in the front steps of the Elite saloon.” Here, too, appears the delightful literary item that Mark Twain and Charles Egbert Craddock are spending the summer together in their Adirondacks camp. “Free,” runs its advertising column, “a clergyman who cured himself of fits will send one book containing 100 popular songs, one repeating rifle, two decks easywinner cards and 1 liver pad free of charge for $8. Address Sucker & Chump, Augusta, Me.” The office moves nearly every week, probably in accordance with the time-honored principle involving the comparative ease of moving and paying rent. When the Colonel publishes his own candidacy for mayor, he further declares that the Patriot will accept no announcements for municipal offices until after “our” (the editor’s) canvass. Adams & Co., grocers, order their $2.25 ad. discontinued and find later in the Patriot this estimate of their product: “No less than three children have been poisoned by eating their canned vegetables, and J. O. Adams, the senior member of the firm, was run out of Kansas City for adulterating codfish balls. It pays to advertise.” Here is the editorial in which the editor first announces his campaign: “Our worthy mayor, Colonel Henry Stutty, died this morning after an illness of about five minutes, brought on by carrying a bouquet to Mrs. Eli Watts just as Eli got in from a fishing trip. Ten minutes later we had dodgers out announcing our candidacy for the office. We have lived in Plunkville going on five years and have never been elected anything yet. We understand the mayor business thoroughly and if elected some people will wish wolves had stolen them from their cradles …”
-The page from the Patriot is presented with an array of perfectly confused type, of artistic errors in setting up, and when an occasional line gets shifted (intentionally, of course) the effect is alarming. Anybody who knows the advertising of a small country weekly can, as he reads, pick out, in the following, the advertisement from the “personal.”
-| Miss Hattie Green of Paris, Ill., isSteel-riveted seam or water powerautomatic oiling thoroughly testedvisiting her sister Mrs. G. W. GrubesLittle Giant Engines at Adams & Co.Also Sachet powders Mc. Cormick Reapers andoysters. | -
All of this was a part of The Rolling Stone, which flourished, or at least wavered, in Austin during the years 1894 and 1895. Years before, Porter’s strong instinct to write had been gratified in letters. He wrote, in his twenties, long imaginative letters, occasionally stuffed with execrable puns, but more than often buoyant, truly humorous, keenly incisive into the unreal, especially in fiction. I have included a number of these letters to Doctor Beall of Greensboro, N. C., and to his early friend in Texas, Mr. David Harrell.
-In 1895–1896 Porter went to Houston, Texas, to work on the Houston Post. There he “conducted” a column which he called “Postscripts.” Some of the contents of the pages that follow have been taken from these old files in the fair hope that admirers of the matured O. Henry will find in them pleasurable marks of the later genius.
-Before the days of The Rolling Stone there are eleven years in Texas over which, with the exception of the letters mentioned, there are few “traces” of literary performance; but there are some very interesting drawings, some of which are reproduced in this volume. A story is back of them. They were the illustrations to a book. “Joe” Dixon, prospector and inveterate fortune-seeker, came to Austin from the Rockies in 1883, at the constant urging of his old pal, Mr. John Maddox, “Joe,” kept writing Mr. Maddox, “your fortune’s in your pen, not your pick. Come to Austin and write an account of your adventures.” It was hard to woo Dixon from the gold that wasn’t there, but finally Maddox wrote him he must come and try the scheme. “There’s a boy here from North Carolina,” wrote Maddox. “His name is Will Porter and he can make the pictures. He’s all right.” Dixon came. The plan was that, after Author and Artist had done their work, Patron would step in, carry the manuscript to New York, bestow it on a deserving publisher and then return to await, with the other two, the avalanche of royalties. This version of the story comes from Mr. Maddox. There were forty pictures in all and they were very true to the life of the Rockies in the seventies. Of course, the young artist had no “technique”—no anything except what was native. But wait! As the months went by Dixon worked hard, but he began to have doubts. Perhaps the book was no good. Perhaps John would only lose his money. He was a miner, not a writer, and he ought not to let John go to any expense. The result of this line of thought was the Colorado River for the manuscript and the high road for the author. The pictures, fortunately, were saved. Most of them Porter gave later to Mrs. Hagelstein of San Angelo, Texas. Mr. Maddox, by the way, finding a note from Joe that “explained all,” hastened to the river and recovered a few scraps of the great book that had lodged against a sandbar. But there was no putting them together again.
-So much for the title. It is a real O. Henry title. Contents of this last volume are drawn not only from letters, old newspaper files, and The Rolling Stone, but from magazines and unpublished manuscripts. Of the short stories, several were written at the very height of his powers and popularity and were lost, inexplicably, but lost. Of the poems, there are a few whose authorship might have been in doubt if the compiler of this collection had not secured external evidence that made them certainly the work of O. Henry. Without this very strong evidence, they might have been rejected because they were not entirely the kind of poems the readers of O. Henry would expect from him. Most of them however, were found in his own indubitable manuscript or over his own signature.
-There is extant a mass of O. Henry correspondence that has not been included in this collection. During the better part of a decade in New York City he wrote constantly to editors, and in many instances intimately. This is very important material, and permission has been secured to use nearly all of it in a biographical volume that will be issued within the next two or three years. The letters in this volume have been chosen as an “exihibit,” as early specimens of his writing and for their particularly characteristic turns of thought and phrase. The collection is not “complete” in any historical sense.
-1912.H.P.S.
--The story referred to in this skit appears in “The Trimmed Lamp” under the same title—“The Badge of Policeman O’Roon.”
-
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-fog-in-santone.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-fog-in-santone.xhtml index 82f9a52..3c653ac 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-fog-in-santone.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-fog-in-santone.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@The Adventures of an Author With His Own Hero
--Published in The Cosmopolitan , October, 1912. Probably written in 1904, or shortly after O. Henry’s first successes in New York.
-
The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar.
“I would rather not supply you,” he said doubtfully. “I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an hour ago.”
The customer smiles wanly. “The fault is in your crooked streets. I didn’t intend to call upon you twice, but I guess I got tangled up. Excuse me.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.xhtml index 92305b9..8be1999 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@--Written at the prime of his popularity and power, this characteristic and amusing story was published in Everybody’s Magazine in August, 1906.
-
I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight of a stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick and alike as the grains in a sandstorm; and you grow to hate them as you do a friend who is always by you, or one of your own kin.
And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a scaly-bark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool that omnigeneously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screwdriver, a buttonhook, a nail-file, a shoehorn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler, and an ornament to any gentleman’s key-ring.
And then a stall-fed cop shoved himself through the congregation of customers. The vender, plainly used to having his seasons of trade thus abruptly curtailed, closed his satchel and slipped like a weasel through the opposite segment of the circle. The crowd scurried aimlessly away like ants from a disturbed crumb. The cop, suddenly becoming oblivious of the earth and its inhabitants, stood still, swelling his bulk and putting his club through an intricate drill of twirls. I hurried after Kansas Bill Bowers, and caught him by an arm.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-snapshot-at-the-president.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-snapshot-at-the-president.xhtml index a795ad6..f925292 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-snapshot-at-the-president.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-snapshot-at-the-president.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@--This is the kind of waggish editorial O. Henry was writing in 1894 for the readers of The Rolling Stone. The reader will do well to remember that the paper was for local consumption and that the allusions are to a very special place and time.
-
(It will be remembered that about a month ago there were special rates offered to the public for a round trip to the City of Washington. The price of the ticket being exceedingly low, we secured a loan of twenty dollars from a public-spirited citizen of Austin, by mortgaging our press and cow, with the additional security of our brother’s name and a slight draught on Major Hutchinson for $4,000.
We purchased a round trip ticket, two loaves of Vienna bread, and quite a large piece of cheese, which we handed to a member of our reportorial staff, with instructions to go to Washington, interview President Cleveland, and get a scoop, if possible, on all other Texas papers.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-strange-story.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-strange-story.xhtml index 04d69cb..8ed5b0a 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-strange-story.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-strange-story.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +A Strange Story
---From The Rolling Stone.
-A Strange Story
In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the name of Smothers. The family consisted of John Smothers, his wife, himself, their little daughter, five years of age, and her parents, making six people toward the population of the city when counted for a special write-up, but only three by actual count.
One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic, and John Smothers hurried down town to get some medicine.
He never came back.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/an-apology.xhtml b/src/epub/text/an-apology.xhtml index 87c1734..57b524c 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/an-apology.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/an-apology.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +An Apology
---This appeared in The Rolling Stone shortly before it “suspended publication” never to resume.
-An Apology
The person who sweeps the office, translates letters from foreign countries, deciphers communications from graduates of business colleges, and does most of the writing for this paper, has been confined for the past two weeks to the under side of a large red quilt, with a joint caucus of la grippe and measles.
We have missed two issues of The Rolling Stone, and are now slightly convalescent, for which we desire to apologize and express our regrets.
Everybody’s term of subscription will be extended enough to cover all missed issues, and we hope soon to report that the goose remains suspended at a favorable altitude. People who have tried to run a funny paper and entertain a congregation of large piebald measles at the same time will understand something of the tact, finesse, and hot sassafras tea required to do so. We expect to get out the paper regularly from this time on, but are forced to be very careful, as improper treatment and deleterious aftereffects of measles, combined with the high price of paper and presswork, have been known to cause a relapse. Anyone not getting their paper regularly will please come down and see about it, bringing with them a ham or any little delicacy relished by invalids.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/an-unfinished-christmas-story.xhtml b/src/epub/text/an-unfinished-christmas-story.xhtml index 53ee6fb..881a074 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/an-unfinished-christmas-story.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/an-unfinished-christmas-story.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +An Unfinished Christmas Story
---Probably begun several years before his death. Published, as it here appears, in Short Stories, January, 1911.
-An Unfinished Christmas Story
Now, a Christmas story should be one. For a good many years the ingenious writers have been putting forth tales for the holiday numbers that employed every subtle, evasive, indirect and strategic scheme they could invent to disguise the Christmas flavor. So far has this new practice been carried that nowadays when you read a story in a holiday magazine the only way you can tell it is a Christmas story is to look at the footnote which reads: [“The incidents in the above story happened on December 25th.—Ed.”]
There is progress in this; but it is all very sad. There are just as many real Christmas stories as ever, if we would only dig ’em up. Me, I am for the Scrooge and Marley Christmas story, and the Annie and Willie’s prayer poem, and the long lost son coming home on the stroke of twelve to the poorly thatched cottage with his arms full of talking dolls and popcorn balls and—Zip! you hear the second mortgage on the cottage go flying off it into the deep snow.
So, this is to warn you that there is no subterfuge about this story—and you might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plum puddings and hark! the chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up and handing over penny whistles to lame newsboys if you read further.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/aristocracy-versus-hash.xhtml b/src/epub/text/aristocracy-versus-hash.xhtml index ecdfbba..98ea1e3 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/aristocracy-versus-hash.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/aristocracy-versus-hash.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +Aristocracy Versus Hash
---From The Rolling Stone.
-Aristocracy Versus Hash
The snake reporter of The Rolling Stone was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the Y.M.C.A. rooms when he was approached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice.
“ ‘Can you tell me, Sir, where I can find in this town a family of scrubs?’
“ ‘I don’t understand exactly.’
diff --git a/src/epub/text/bexar-scrip-no-2692.xhtml b/src/epub/text/bexar-scrip-no-2692.xhtml index f751efc..f27e548 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/bexar-scrip-no-2692.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/bexar-scrip-no-2692.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +Bexar Scrip No. 2692
---From The Rolling Stone, Saturday, March 5, 1894.
-Bexar Scrip No. 2692
Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see the General Land Office.
As you pass up the avenue you turn sharp round the corner of the court house, and on a steep hill before you you see a medieval castle.
You think of the Rhine; the “castled crag of Drachenfels”; the Lorelei; and the vine-clad slopes of Germany. And German it is in every line of its architecture and design.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/fickle-fortune-or-how-gladys-hustled.xhtml b/src/epub/text/fickle-fortune-or-how-gladys-hustled.xhtml index e0425d8..44f56c3 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/fickle-fortune-or-how-gladys-hustled.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/fickle-fortune-or-how-gladys-hustled.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled
---From The Rolling Stone.
-Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled
“Press me no more Mr. Snooper,” said Gladys Vavasour-Smith. “I can never be yours.”
“You have led me to believe different, Gladys,” said Bertram D. Snooper.
The setting sun was flooding with golden light the oriel windows of a magnificent mansion situated in one of the most aristocratic streets west of the brick yard.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/helping-the-other-fellow.xhtml b/src/epub/text/helping-the-other-fellow.xhtml index 679e869..00da97f 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/helping-the-other-fellow.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/helping-the-other-fellow.xhtml @@ -7,16 +7,11 @@- - +Helping the Other Fellow
---Originally published in Munsey’s Magazine, December, 1908.
---“But can thim that helps others help thimselves!”
- —Mulvaney. -Helping the Other Fellow
++“But can thim that helps others help thimselves!”
+ —Mulvaney. +This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer Andador which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving the Land of Always Afternoon. William was remaining, and he favored me with a condensed oral autobiography as we sat on the sands in the shade cast by the Bodega Nacional.
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 Terence.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/lord-oakhursts-curse.xhtml b/src/epub/text/lord-oakhursts-curse.xhtml index bf981cc..6e60d48 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/lord-oakhursts-curse.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/lord-oakhursts-curse.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +Lord Oakhurst’s Curse
---This story was sent to Dr. Beall of Greensboro, N. C., in a letter in 1883, and so is one of O. Henry’s earliest attempts at writing.
-Lord Oakhurst’s Curse
I
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.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/queries-and-answers.xhtml b/src/epub/text/queries-and-answers.xhtml index 945df0a..1d75a65 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/queries-and-answers.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/queries-and-answers.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +Queries and Answers
---From The Rolling Stone, June 23, 1894.
-Queries and Answers
Can you inform me where I can buy an interest in a newspaper of some kind? I have some money and would be glad to invest it in something of the sort, if someone would allow me to put in my capital against his experience.
College Graduate.
Telegraph us your address at once, day message. Keep telegraphing every ten minutes at our expense until we see you. Will start on first train after receiving your wire.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/sound-and-fury.xhtml b/src/epub/text/sound-and-fury.xhtml index 089d2f6..0431298 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/sound-and-fury.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/sound-and-fury.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +Sound and Fury
---O. Henry wrote this for Ainslee’s Magazine, where it appeared in March, 1903.
-Sound and Fury
Persons of the Drama
- diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-atavism-of-john-tom-little-bear.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-atavism-of-john-tom-little-bear.xhtml index a49a1fd..f739423 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-atavism-of-john-tom-little-bear.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-atavism-of-john-tom-little-bear.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@
Mr. Penne, an author
- - +The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear
---O. Henry thought this the best of the Jeff Peters stories, all the rest of which are included in “The Gentle Grafter,” except “Cupid à la Carte” in the “Heart of the West.” “The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear” appeared in Everybody’s Magazine for July, 1903.
-The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear
I saw a light in Jeff Peters’s room over the Red Front Drug Store. I hastened toward it, for I had not known that Jeff was in town. He is a man of the Hadji breed, of a hundred occupations, with a story to tell (when he will) of each one.
I found Jeff repacking his grip for a run down to Florida to look at an orange grove for which he had traded, a month before, his mining claim on the Yukon. He kicked me a chair, with the same old humorous, profound smile on his seasoned countenance. It had been eight months since we had met, but his greeting was such as men pass from day to day. Time is Jeff’s servant, and the continent is a big lot across which he cuts to his many roads.
For a while we skirmished along the edges of unprofitable talk which culminated in that unquiet problem of the Philippines.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-dream.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-dream.xhtml index ace93a7..67fb22b 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-dream.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-dream.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +The Dream
---This was the last work of O. Henry. The Cosmopolitan Magazine had ordered it from him and, after his death, the unfinished manuscript was found in his room, on his dusty desk. The story as it here appears was published in the Cosmopolitan for September, 1910.
-The Dream
Murray dreamed a dream.
Both psychology and science grope when they would explain to us the strange adventures of our immaterial selves when wandering in the realm of “Death’s twin brother, Sleep.” This story will not attempt to be illuminative; it is no more than a record of Murray’s dream. One of the most puzzling phases of that strange waking sleep is that dreams which seem to cover months or even years may take place within a few seconds or minutes.
Murray was waiting in his cell in the ward of the condemned. An electric arc light in the ceiling of the corridor shone brightly upon his table. On a sheet of white paper an ant crawled wildly here and there as Murray blocked its way with an envelope. The electrocution was set for eight o’clock in the evening. Murray smiled at the antics of the wisest of insects.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-friendly-call.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-friendly-call.xhtml index 462c78b..e906c30 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-friendly-call.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-friendly-call.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +The Friendly Call
---Published in “Monthly Magazine Section,” July, 1910.
-The Friendly Call
When I used to sell hardware in the West, I often “made” a little town called Saltillo, in Colorado. I was always certain of securing a small or a large order from Simon Bell, who kept a general store there. Bell was one of those six-foot, low-voiced products, formed from a union of the West and the South. I liked him. To look at him you would think he should be robbing stage coaches or juggling gold mines with both hands; but he would sell you a paper of tacks or a spool of thread, with ten times more patience and courtesy than any saleslady in a city department store.
I had a twofold object in my last visit to Saltillo. One was to sell a bill of goods; the other to advise Bell of a chance that I knew of by which I was certain he could make a small fortune.
In Mountain City, a town on the Union Pacific, five times larger than Saltillo, a mercantile firm was about to go to the wall. It had a lively and growing custom, but was on the edge of dissolution and ruin. Mismanagement and the gambling habits of one of the partners explained it. The condition of the firm was not yet public property. I had my knowledge of it from a private source. I knew that, if the ready cash were offered, the stock and good will could be bought for about one fourth their value.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/tictocq.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-great-french-detective-in-austin.xhtml similarity index 96% rename from src/epub/text/tictocq.xhtml rename to src/epub/text/the-great-french-detective-in-austin.xhtml index 67dc81a..c69478f 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/tictocq.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-great-french-detective-in-austin.xhtml @@ -1,20 +1,16 @@ -Tictocq +The Great French Detective, in Austin: A Successful Political Intrigue -- - -Tictocq
---These two farcical stories about Tictocq appeared in The Rolling Stone. They are reprinted here with all of their local references because, written hurriedly and for neighborly reading, they nevertheless have an interest for the admirer of O. Henry. They were written in 1894.
-THE GREAT FRENCH DETECTIVE, IN AUSTIN
- A Successful Political Intrigue ++ + The Great French Detective, in Austin + A Successful Political Intrigue +
I
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.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-marionettes.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-marionettes.xhtml index 1affdd3..017910c 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-marionettes.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-marionettes.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +The Marionettes
---Originally published in The Black Cat for April, 1902, The Short Story Publishing Co.
-The Marionettes
The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the street. The time was two o’clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch of cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.
A man, wearing a long overcoat, with his hat tilted down in front, and carrying something in one hand, walked softly but rapidly out of the black alley. The policeman accosted him civilly, but with the assured air that is linked with conscious authority. The hour, the alley’s musty reputation, the pedestrian’s haste, the burden he carried—these easily combined into the “suspicious circumstances” that required illumination at the officer’s hands.
The “suspect” halted readily and tilted back his hat, exposing, in the flicker of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with a rather long nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into a side pocket of his overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the policeman. Holding it to catch the uncertain light, the officer read the name “Charles Spencer James, M. D.” The street and number of the address were of a neighborhood so solid and respectable as to subdue even curiosity. The policeman’s downward glance at the article carried in the doctor’s hand—a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small silver mountings—further endorsed the guarantee of the card.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-marquis-and-miss-sally.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-marquis-and-miss-sally.xhtml index b65aa37..e9fd477 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-marquis-and-miss-sally.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-marquis-and-miss-sally.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +The Marquis and Miss Sally
---Originally published in Everybody’s Magazine, June 1903.
-The Marquis and Miss Sally
Without knowing it, Old Bill Bascom had the honor of being overtaken by fate the same day with the Marquis of Borodale.
The Marquis lived in Regent Square, London. Old Bill lived on Limping Doe Creek, Hardeman County, Texas. The cataclysm that engulfed the Marquis took the form of a bursting bubble known as the Central and South American Mahogany and Caoutchouc Monopoly. Old Bill’s Nemesis was in the no less perilous shape of a band of civilized Indian cattle thieves from the Territory who ran off his entire herd of four hundred head, and shot old Bill dead as he trailed after them. To even up the consequences of the two catastrophes, the Marquis, as soon as he found that all he possessed would pay only fifteen shillings on the pound of his indebtedness, shot himself.
Old Bill left a family of six motherless sons and daughters, who found themselves without even a red steer left to eat, or a red cent to buy one with.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-prisoner-of-zembla.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-prisoner-of-zembla.xhtml index 07b25dd..40a723a 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-prisoner-of-zembla.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-prisoner-of-zembla.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +The Prisoner of Zembla
---From The Rolling Stone.
-The Prisoner of Zembla
So the king fell into a furious rage, so that none durst go near him for fear, and he gave out that since the Princess Ostla had disobeyed him there would be a great tourney, and to the knight who should prove himself of the greatest valor he would give the hand of the princess.
And he sent forth a herald to proclaim that he would do this.
And the herald went about the country making his desire known, blowing a great tin horn and riding a noble steed that pranced and gambolled; and the villagers gazed upon him and said: “Lo, that is one of them tin horn gamblers concerning which the chroniclers have told us.”
diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml index 6abd8b8..49ea6ef 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-unprofitable-servant.xhtml @@ -7,12 +7,7 @@- - +The Unprofitable Servant
---Left unfinished, and published as it here appears in Everybody’s Magazine, December, 1911.
-The Unprofitable Servant
I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men. Singly, they are my encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers. But now and then it happens that all of them will pitch upon the same printworthy incident of the passing earthly panorama and will send in reportorial constructions thereof to their respective journals. It is then that, for me, it is to laugh. For it seems that to each of them, trained and skilled as he may be, the same occurrence presents a different facet of the cut diamond, life.
One will have it (let us say) that Mme. André Macarté’s apartment was looted by six burglars, who descended via the fire-escape and bore away a ruby tiara valued at two thousand dollars and a five-hundred-dollar prize Spitz dog, which (in violation of the expectoration ordinance) was making free with the halls of the Wuttapesituckquesunoowetunquah Apartments.
My second “chiel” will take notes to the effect that while a friendly game of pinochle was in progress in the tenement rooms of Mrs. Andy McCarty, a lady guest named Ruby O’Hara threw a burglar down six flights of stairs, where he was pinioned and held by a two-thousand-dollar English bulldog amid a crowd of five hundred excited spectators.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/tracked-to-doom.xhtml b/src/epub/text/tracked-to-doom.xhtml index a6c1876..aeb09e8 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/tracked-to-doom.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/tracked-to-doom.xhtml @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ -Tracked to Doom +Tracked to Doom: The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@Tracked to Doom - Or
The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud + The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud’Tis midnight in Paris.
diff --git a/src/epub/toc.xhtml b/src/epub/toc.xhtml index 0264095..2cd3b63 100644 --- a/src/epub/toc.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/toc.xhtml @@ -14,13 +14,7 @@ Imprint- - The editor’s own statement of his aims -
-- - INTRODUCTION -
-- - A DINNER AT ⸻[3] + A Dinner At ⸻
- A Fog in Santone @@ -95,6 +89,20 @@
- The Friendly Call
+- + The Great French Detective, in Austin + +
- The Marionettes
@@ -107,20 +115,6 @@- The Unprofitable Servant
-- - Tictocq - -
- Tracked to Doom
@@ -145,7 +139,10 @@ Imprint- - Rolling Stones + Rolling Stones +
+- + Endnotes
- Colophon