diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-green-hand.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-green-hand.xhtml index 637ac4e..c4155f6 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-green-hand.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-green-hand.xhtml @@ -12,8 +12,8 @@

“You see, at Christmas time we generally need more help, and sometimes employ people who can sell goods, but are not familiar with the fine points of the business. Now, that young man over there is thoroughly good and polite to everyone, but he has just lost me one of my best customers.”

“How was that?” asked the friend.

“A man who always trades with us came in with his wife last week and with her assistance selected a magnificent diamond pin that he had promised her for a Christmas present and told this young man to lay it aside for him till today.”

-

“I see, said the friend, “and he sold it to someone else and disappointed him.”

-

“It’s plain you don’t know much about married men, said the jeweler. “That idiot of a clerk actually saved the pin for him and he had to buy it.”

+

“I see,” said the friend, “and he sold it to someone else and disappointed him.”

+

“It’s plain you don’t know much about married men,” said the jeweler. “That idiot of a clerk actually saved the pin for him and he had to buy it.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.xhtml index 4b6754c..6c631a5 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-ruler-of-men.xhtml @@ -149,7 +149,7 @@

“ ‘That big, oogly man,’ said Izzy. ‘But all right⁠—he your friend.’

“I pulled a rose out of a bunch in a jar, and took the grub-basket around to the jail. O’Connor ate like a wolf. Then he wiped his face with a banana peel and said: ‘Have you heard nothing from Dona Isabel yet?’

“ ‘Hist!’ says I, slipping the rose between the bars. ‘She sends you this. She bids you take courage. At nightfall two masked men brought it to the ruined château in the orange grove. How did you like that goat hash, Barney?’

-

“O’Connor pressed the rose to his lips. “ ‘This is more to me than all the food in the world,’ says he. ‘But the supper was fine. Where did you raise it?’

+

“O’Connor pressed the rose to his lips. ‘This is more to me than all the food in the world,’ says he. ‘But the supper was fine. Where did you raise it?’

“ ‘I’ve negotiated a standoff at a delicatessen hut downtown,’ I tells him. ‘Rest easy. If there’s anything to be done I’ll do it.’

“So things went along that way for some weeks. Izzy was a great cook; and if she had had a little more poise of character and smoked a little better brand of tobacco we might have drifted into some sense of responsibility for the honor I had conferred on her. But as time went on I began to hunger for the sight of a real lady standing before me in a streetcar. All I was staying in that land of bilk and money for was because I couldn’t get away, and I thought it no more than decent to stay and see O’Connor shot.

“One day our old interpreter drops around and after smoking an hour says that the judge of the peace sent him to request me to call on him. I went to his office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of the town; and there I had a surprise. I expected to see one of the usual cinnamon-colored natives in congress gaiters and one of Pizzaro’s cast-off hats. What I saw was an elegant gentleman of a slightly claybank complexion sitting in an upholstered leather chair, sipping a highball and reading Mrs. Humphry Ward. I had smuggled into my brain a few words of Spanish by the help of Izzy, and I began to remark in a rich Andalusian brogue:

diff --git a/src/epub/text/a-sporting-interest.xhtml b/src/epub/text/a-sporting-interest.xhtml index 54d1ff5..7b13ddb 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/a-sporting-interest.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/a-sporting-interest.xhtml @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@

“You go, Mike,” three or four of them say at once. “ ’Tis more lamin’ ye have than any av us, whatever, and ye’ll be afther brakin’ the news to her as aisy as ye can. Be off wid ye now, and shpake gently to Tim’s poor lassie while we thry to get the corpse in shape.”

Mike is a pleasant-faced man, young and stalwart, and with a last look at his unfortunate comrade he goes slowly down the street toward the cottage where the fair young wife⁠—alas, now a widow⁠—lives.

When he arrives, he does not hesitate. He is tenderhearted, but strong. He lifts the gate latch and walks firmly to the door. There is something in his face, before he speaks, that tells her the truth.

-

“What was it?’ she asks, “spontaneous combustion or snakes?”

+

“What was it?” she asks, “spontaneous combustion or snakes?”

“Derrick fell,” says Mike.

“Then I’ve lost my bet,” she says. “I thought sure it would be whisky.”

Life, messieurs, is full of disappointments.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/best-seller.xhtml b/src/epub/text/bestseller.xhtml similarity index 100% rename from src/epub/text/best-seller.xhtml rename to src/epub/text/bestseller.xhtml diff --git a/src/epub/text/no-story.xhtml b/src/epub/text/no-story.xhtml index 23f78ab..45482de 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/no-story.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/no-story.xhtml @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@

“I don’t want to borrow any,” said Tripp, and I breathed again. “I thought you’d like to get put onto a good story,” he went on. “I’ve got a rattling fine one for you. You ought to make it run a column at least. It’ll make a dandy if you work it up right. It’ll probably cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff. I don’t want anything out of it myself.”

I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past favors, although he did not return them. If he had been wise enough to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it.

“What is the story?” I asked, poising my pencil with a finely calculated editorial air.

-

“I’ll tell you,” said Tripp. “It’s a girl. A beauty. One of the howlingest Amsden’s Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew⁠—violets in their mossy bed⁠—and truck like that. She’s lived on Long Island twenty years and never saw New York City before. I ran against her on Thirty-fourth Street. She’d just got in on the East River ferry. I tell you, she’s a beauty that would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street and asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could find “George Brown in New York City!” What do you think of that?

+

“I’ll tell you,” said Tripp. “It’s a girl. A beauty. One of the howlingest Amsden’s Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew⁠—violets in their mossy bed⁠—and truck like that. She’s lived on Long Island twenty years and never saw New York City before. I ran against her on Thirty-fourth Street. She’d just got in on the East River ferry. I tell you, she’s a beauty that would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the world. She stopped me on the street and asked me where she could find George Brown. Asked me where she could find ‘George Brown in New York City!’ What do you think of that?

“I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young farmer named Dodd⁠—Hiram Dodd⁠—next week. But it seems that George Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch Ada⁠—her name’s Ada Lowery⁠—saddles a nag and rides eight miles to the railroad station and catches the 6:45 a.m. train for the city. Looking for George, you know⁠—you understand about women⁠—George wasn’t there, so she wanted him.

“Well, you know, I couldn’t leave her loose in Wolftown-on-the-Hudson. I suppose she thought the first person she inquired of would say: ‘George Brown?⁠—why, yes⁠—lemme see⁠—he’s a short man with light-blue eyes, ain’t he? Oh yes⁠—you’ll find George on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, right next to the grocery. He’s bill-clerk in a saddle-and-harness store.’ That’s about how innocent and beautiful she is. You know those little Long Island waterfront villages like Greenburg⁠—a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine summer visitors for industries. That’s the kind of a place she comes from. But, say⁠—you ought to see her!

“What could I do? I don’t know what money looks like in the morning. And she’d paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket except a quarter, which she had squandered on gumdrops. She was eating them out of a paper bag. I took her to a boardinghouse on Thirty-second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She’s in soak for a dollar. That’s old Mother McGinnis’ price per day. I’ll show you the house.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/relieved.xhtml b/src/epub/text/relieved.xhtml index 3c4cdf2..4efae7e 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/relieved.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/relieved.xhtml @@ -8,7 +8,7 @@

Relieved

-

A Houston gentleman who is worth somewhere up in the hundreds of thousands and lives on eleven dollars a week, was sitting in his private office a few days ago, when a desperatelooking man entered and closed the door carefully behind him. The man had an evil, villainous-looking face, and in his hand he held with the utmost care an oblong, square-shaped package. “What do you want?” asked the capitalist.

+

A Houston gentleman who is worth somewhere up in the hundreds of thousands and lives on eleven dollars a week, was sitting in his private office a few days ago, when a desperate looking man entered and closed the door carefully behind him. The man had an evil, villainous-looking face, and in his hand he held with the utmost care an oblong, square-shaped package. “What do you want?” asked the capitalist.

“I must have money,” hissed the stranger. I am starving while you are rolling in wealth. Do you see this little package? Do you know what it contains?”

The wealthy citizen sprang from his desk in horror, pale with fright.

“No, no,” he gasped. “You would not be so cruel, so heartless.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-admiral.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-admiral.xhtml index c54d3d9..9a6117a 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-admiral.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-admiral.xhtml @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@

The champagne was bubbling trickily in the veins of the mercurial statesmen. It was not the custom of the grave governors of Anchuria to enliven their sessions with a beverage so apt to cast a veil of disparagement over sober affairs. The wine had been a thoughtful compliment tendered by the agent of the Vesuvius Fruit Company as a token of amicable relations⁠—and certain consummated deals⁠—between that company and the republic of Anchuria.

The jest was carried to its end. A formidable, official document was prepared, encrusted with chromatic seals and jaunty with fluttering ribbons, bearing the florid signatures of state. This commission conferred upon el Señor Don Felipe Carrera the title of Flag Admiral of the Republic of Anchuria. Thus within the space of a few minutes and the dominion of a dozen “extra dry,” the country took its place among the naval powers of the world, and Felipe Carrera became entitled to a salute of nineteen guns whenever he might enter port.

The southern races are lacking in that particular kind of humour that finds entertainment in the defects and misfortunes bestowed by Nature. Owing to this defect in their constitution they are not moved to laughter (as are their northern brothers) by the spectacle of the deformed, the feebleminded or the insane.

-

Felipe Carrera was sent upon earth with but half his wits. Therefore, the people of Coralio called him “El pobrecito loco“⁠—“the poor little crazed one”⁠—saying that God had sent but half of him to earth, retaining the other half.

+

Felipe Carrera was sent upon earth with but half his wits. Therefore, the people of Coralio called him “El pobrecito loco”⁠—“the poor little crazed one”⁠—saying that God had sent but half of him to earth, retaining the other half.

A sombre youth, glowering, and speaking only at the rarest times, Felipe was but negatively “loco.” On shore he generally refused all conversation. He seemed to know that he was badly handicapped on land, where so many kinds of understanding are needed; but on the water his one talent set him equal with most men. Few sailors whom God had carefully and completely made could handle a sailboat as well. Five points nearer the wind than even the best of them he could sail his sloop. When the elements raged and set other men to cowering, the deficiencies of Felipe seemed of little importance. He was a perfect sailor, if an imperfect man. He owned no boat, but worked among the crews of the schooners and sloops that skimmed the coast, trading and freighting fruit out to the steamers where there was no harbour. It was through his famous skill and boldness on the sea, as well as for the pity felt for his mental imperfections, that he was recommended by the collector as a suitable custodian of the captured sloop.

When the outcome of Don Sabas’ little pleasantry arrived in the form of the imposing and preposterous commission, the collector smiled. He had not expected such prompt and overwhelming response to his recommendation. He despatched a muchacho at once to fetch the future admiral.

The collector waited in his official quarters. His office was in the Calle Grande, and the sea breezes hummed through its windows all day. The collector, in white linen and canvas shoes, philandered with papers on an antique desk. A parrot, perched on a pen rack, seasoned the official tedium with a fire of choice Castilian imprecations. Two rooms opened into the collector’s. In one the clerical force of young men of variegated complexions transacted with glitter and parade their several duties. Through the open door of the other room could be seen a bronze babe, guiltless of clothing, that rollicked upon the floor. In a grass hammock a thin woman, tinted a pale lemon, played a guitar and swung contentedly in the breeze. Thus surrounded by the routine of his high duties and the visible tokens of agreeable domesticity, the collector’s heart was further made happy by the power placed in his hands to brighten the fortunes of the “innocent” Felipe.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-bad-man.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-bad-man.xhtml index edf0510..6642f31 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-bad-man.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-bad-man.xhtml @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@

The crowd fell back a few yards further and the police turned pale again, but the skinny little man adjusted his spectacles with both hands, and stepped on to the edge of the sidewalk and took a good look at the bad men. Then he deliberately struck across the street at a funny hopping kind of a run right up to where the terror stood.

The crowd yelled at him to come back, and the desperado flourished his six-shooter again, but the little man went straight up to him and said something. The crowd shuddered and expected to see him fall with a forty-five bullet in him, but he didn’t. They saw the desperado lower his pistol and run his hand in his pocket and hand something to the little man.

Then the desperado walked sheepishly down the sidewalk, and the little man came back across the street.

-

“Bad man?’ he said. “I guess not. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. That’s Zeke Skinner. He was raised on the farm next to me in Connecticut. He’s selling some kind of fake liver medicine, and that’s his street rig he’s got on now. I loaned him eight dollars in Hartford nine years ago, and never expected to see him again. Thought I knew his voice. Pay? I reckon he paid me. I calculate I always collect what’s owing to me.”

+

“Bad man?” he said. “I guess not. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. That’s Zeke Skinner. He was raised on the farm next to me in Connecticut. He’s selling some kind of fake liver medicine, and that’s his street rig he’s got on now. I loaned him eight dollars in Hartford nine years ago, and never expected to see him again. Thought I knew his voice. Pay? I reckon he paid me. I calculate I always collect what’s owing to me.”

Then the crowd scattered and the twelve policeman headed Zeke off at the next corner and clubbed him all the way to the station house.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-city-of-dreadful-night.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-city-of-dreadful-night.xhtml index 3492601..6f8d66f 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-city-of-dreadful-night.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-city-of-dreadful-night.xhtml @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@

“ ‘Ye’ll pass the night in this stretch of woods and scenery,’ says Officer Reagan. ”Twill be fine and imprisonment for insoolting the Park Commissioner and the Chief of the Weather Bureau if ye refuse. I’m in charge of thirty acres between here and the Agyptian Monument, and I advise ye to give no trouble. ’Tis sleeping on the grass yez all have been condemned to by the authorities. Yez’ll be permitted to leave in the morning, but ye must retoorn be night. Me orders was silent on the subject of bail, but I’ll find out if ’tis required and there’ll be bondsmen at the gate.’

“There being no lights except along the automobile drives, us 179 tenants of the Beersheba Flats prepared to spend the night as best we could in the raging forest. Them that brought blankets and kindling wood was best off. They got fires started and wrapped the blankets round their heads and laid down, cursing, in the grass. There was nothing to see, nothing to drink, nothing to do. In the dark we had no way of telling friend or foe except by feeling the noses of ’em. I brought along me last winter overcoat, me toothbrush, some quinine pills and the red quilt off the bed in me flat. Three times during the night somebody rolled on me quilt and stuck his knees against the Adam’s apple of me. And three times I judged his character by running me hand over his face, and three times I rose up and kicked the intruder down the hill to the gravelly walk below. And then someone with a flavour of Kelly’s whiskey snuggled up to me, and I found his nose turned up the right way, and I says: ‘Is that you, then, Patsey?’ and he says, ‘It is, Carney. How long do you think it’ll last?’

“ ‘I’m no weather-prophet,’ says I, ‘but if they bring out a strong anti-Tammany ticket next fall it ought to get us home in time to sleep on a bed once or twice before they line us up at the polls.’

-

“ ‘A-playing of my flute into the airshaft, says Patsey Rourke, ‘and a-perspiring in me own windy to the joyful noise of the passing trains and the smell of liver and onions and a-reading of the latest murder in the smoke of the cooking is well enough for me,’ says he. ‘What is this herding us in grass for, not to mention the crawling things with legs that walk up the trousers of us, and the Jersey snipes that peck at us, masquerading under the name and denomination of mosquitoes. What is it all for Carney, and the rint going on just the same over at the flats?’

+

“ ‘A-playing of my flute into the airshaft,’ says Patsey Rourke, ‘and a-perspiring in me own windy to the joyful noise of the passing trains and the smell of liver and onions and a-reading of the latest murder in the smoke of the cooking is well enough for me,’ says he. ‘What is this herding us in grass for, not to mention the crawling things with legs that walk up the trousers of us, and the Jersey snipes that peck at us, masquerading under the name and denomination of mosquitoes. What is it all for Carney, and the rint going on just the same over at the flats?’

“ ‘’Tis the great annual Municipal Free Night Outing Lawn Party,’ says I, ‘given by the polis, Hetty Green and the Drug Trust. During the heated season they hold a week of it in the principal parks. ’Tis a scheme to reach that portion of the people that’s not worth taking up to North Beach for a fish fry.’

“ ‘I can’t sleep on the ground,’ says Patsey, ‘wid any benefit. I have the hay fever and the rheumatism, and me ear is full of ants.’

“Well, the night goes on, and the ex-tenants of the Flats groans and stumbles around in the dark, trying to find rest and recreation in the forest. The children is screaming with the coldness, and the janitor makes hot tea for ’em and keeps the fires going with the signboards that point to the Tavern and the Casino. The tenants try to lay down on the grass by families in the dark, but you’re lucky if you can sleep next to a man from the same floor or believing in the same religion. Now and then a Murpby, accidental, rolls over on the grass of a Rosenstein, or a Cohen tries to crawl under the O’Grady bush, and then there’s a feeling of noses and somebody is rolled down the hill to the driveway and stays there. There is some hair-pulling among the women folks, and everybody spanks the nearest howling kid to him by the sense of feeling only, regardless of its parentage and ownership. ’Tis hard to keep up the social distinctions in the dark that flourish by daylight in the Beersheba Flats. Mrs. Rafferty, that despises the asphalt that a Dago treads on, wakes up in the morning with her feet in the bosom of Antonio Spizzinelli. And Mike O’Dowd, that always threw peddlers downstairs as fast as he came upon ’em, has to unwind old Isaacstein’s whiskers from around his neck, and wake up the whole gang at daylight. But here and there some few got acquainted and overlooked the discomforts of the elements. There was five engagements to be married announced at the flats the next morning.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-dog-and-the-playlet.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-dog-and-the-playlet.xhtml index 704a137..d81cb96 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-dog-and-the-playlet.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-dog-and-the-playlet.xhtml @@ -27,7 +27,7 @@

“It is my opinion,” said I, “that great human emotions shake up our vocabulary and leave the words best suited to express them on top. A sudden violent grief or loss or disappointment will bring expressions out of an ordinary man as strong and solemn and dramatic as those used in fiction or on the stage to portray those emotions.”

“That’s where you fellows are wrong,” said Hollis. “Plain, everyday talk is what goes. Your captain would very likely have kicked the cat, lit a cigar, stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a lawyer, instead of getting off those Robert Mantell pyrotechnics.”

“Possibly, a little later,” I continued. “But just at the time⁠—just as the blow is delivered, if something Scriptural or theatrical and deep-tongued isn’t wrung from a man in spite of his modern and practical way of speaking, then I’m wrong.”

-

“Of course,” said Hollis, kindly, “you’ve got to whoop her up some degrees for the stage. The audience expects it. When the villain kidnaps little Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks out of the atmosphere, and scream: “Me chee-ild, me chee-ild!” What she would actually do would be to call up the police by phone, ring for some strong tea, and get the little darling’s photo out, ready for the reporters. When you get your villain in a corner⁠—a stage corner⁠—it’s all right for him to clap his hand to his forehead and hiss: “All is lost!” Off the stage he would remark: “This is a conspiracy against me⁠—I refer you to my lawyers.’ ”

+

“Of course,” said Hollis, kindly, “you’ve got to whoop her up some degrees for the stage. The audience expects it. When the villain kidnaps little Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks out of the atmosphere, and scream: ‘Me chee-ild, me chee-ild!’ What she would actually do would be to call up the police by phone, ring for some strong tea, and get the little darling’s photo out, ready for the reporters. When you get your villain in a corner⁠—a stage corner⁠—it’s all right for him to clap his hand to his forehead and hiss: ‘All is lost!’ Off the stage he would remark: ‘This is a conspiracy against me⁠—I refer you to my lawyers.’ ”

“I get no consolation,” said I, gloomily, “from your concession of an accentuated stage treatment. In my play I fondly hoped that I was following life. If people in real life meet great crises in a commonplace way, they should do the same on the stage.”

And then we drifted, like two trout, out of our cool pool in the great hotel and began to nibble languidly at the gay flies in the swift current of Broadway. And our question of dramatic art was unsettled.

We nibbled at the flies, and avoided the hooks, as wise trout do; but soon the weariness of Manhattan in summer overcame us. Nine stories up, facing the south, was Hollis’s apartment, and we soon stepped into an elevator bound for that cooler haven.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-head-hunter.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-headhunter.xhtml similarity index 100% rename from src/epub/text/the-head-hunter.xhtml rename to src/epub/text/the-headhunter.xhtml diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-man-higher-up.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-man-higher-up.xhtml index 43acb4a..12e3d8b 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-man-higher-up.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-man-higher-up.xhtml @@ -71,7 +71,7 @@

“About two o’clock, as near as I could guess by my watch in Peavine, home comes our laboring man and kicks up Ricks, and calls us to the streak of bright moonlight shining in the cabin door. Then he spreads out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and begins to cackle over the nest-egg like a hen.

“ ‘I’ll tell you a few things about that town,’ says he. ‘It’s named Rocky Springs, and they’re building a Masonic temple, and it looks like the Democratic candidate for mayor is going to get soaked by a Pop, and Judge Tucker’s wife, who has been down with pleurisy, is getting some better. I had a talk on these liliputian thesises before I could get a siphon in the fountain of knowledge that I was after. And there’s a bank there called the Lumberman’s Fidelity and Plowman’s Savings Institution. It closed for business yesterday with $23,000 cash on hand. It will open this morning with $18,000⁠—all silver⁠—that’s the reason I didn’t bring more. There you are, trade and capital. Now, will you be bad?’

“ ‘My young friend,’ says Alfred E. Ricks, holding up his hands, ‘have you robbed this bank? Dear me, dear me!’

-

“ ‘You couldn’t call it that,’ says Bassett. “Robbing” sounds harsh. All I had to do was to find out what street it was on. That town is so quiet that I could stand on the corner and hear the tumblers clicking in that safe lock⁠—“right to 45; left twice to 80; right once to 60; left to 15”⁠—as plain as the Yale captain giving orders in the football dialect. Now, boys,’ says Bassett, ‘this is an early rising town. They tell me the citizens are all up and stirring before daylight. I asked what for, and they said because breakfast was ready at that time. And what of merry Robin Hood? It must be Yoicks! and away with the tinkers’ chorus. I’ll stake you. How much do you want? Speak up. Capital.’

+

“ ‘You couldn’t call it that,’ says Bassett. ‘ “Robbing” sounds harsh. All I had to do was to find out what street it was on. That town is so quiet that I could stand on the corner and hear the tumblers clicking in that safe lock⁠—“right to 45; left twice to 80; right once to 60; left to 15”⁠—as plain as the Yale captain giving orders in the football dialect. Now, boys,’ says Bassett, ‘this is an early rising town. They tell me the citizens are all up and stirring before daylight. I asked what for, and they said because breakfast was ready at that time. And what of merry Robin Hood? It must be Yoicks! and away with the tinkers’ chorus. I’ll stake you. How much do you want? Speak up. Capital.’

“ ‘My dear young friend,’ says this ground squirrel of a Ricks, standing on his hind legs and juggling nuts in his paws, ‘I have friends in Denver who would assist me. If I had a hundred dollars I⁠—’

“Basset unpins a package of the currency and throws five twenties to Ricks.

“ ‘Trade, how much?’ he says to me.

diff --git a/src/epub/text/the-renaissance-at-charleroi.xhtml b/src/epub/text/the-renaissance-at-charleroi.xhtml index 5b250c0..f747e53 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/the-renaissance-at-charleroi.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/the-renaissance-at-charleroi.xhtml @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@

At seven o’clock Grandemont, in evening dress, with pearls⁠—a family passion⁠—in his spotless linen, emerged from somewhere. The invitations had specified eight as the dining hour. He drew an armchair upon the porch, and sat there, smoking cigarettes and half dreaming.

The moon was an hour high. Fifty years back from the gate stood the house, under its noble grove. The road ran in front, and then came the grass-grown levee and the insatiate river beyond. Just above the levee top a tiny red light was creeping down and a tiny green one was creeping up. Then the passing steamers saluted, and the hoarse din startled the drowsy silence of the melancholy lowlands. The stillness returned, save for the little voices of the night⁠—the owl’s recitative, the capriccio of the crickets, the concerto of the frogs in the grass. The piccaninnies and the dawdlers from the quarters had been dismissed to their confines, and the melée of the day was reduced to an orderly and intelligent silence. The six coloured waiters, in their white jackets, paced, cat-footed, about the table, pretending to arrange where all was beyond betterment. Absalom, in black and shining pumps posed, superior, here and there where the lights set off his grandeur. And Grandemont rested in his chair, waiting for his guests.

He must have drifted into a dream⁠—and an extravagant one⁠—for he was master of Charleroi and Adèle was his wife. She was coming out to him now; he could hear her steps; he could feel her hand upon his shoulder⁠—

-

“Pardon moi, M’shi Grande“⁠—it was Absalom’s hand touching him, it was Absalom’s voice, speaking the patois of the blacks⁠—“but it is eight o’clock.”

+

“Pardon moi, M’shi Grande”—it was Absalom’s hand touching him, it was Absalom’s voice, speaking the patois of the blacks⁠—“but it is eight o’clock.”

Eight o’clock. Grandemont sprang up. In the moonlight he could see the row of hitching-posts outside the gate. Long ago the horses of the guests should have stood there. They were vacant.

A chanted roar of indignation, a just, waxing bellow of affront and dishonoured genius came from André’s kitchen, filling the house with rhythmic protest. The beautiful dinner, the pearl of a dinner, the little excellent superb jewel of a dinner! But one moment more of waiting and not even the thousand thunders of black pigs of the quarter would touch it!

“They are a little late,” said Grandemont, calmly. “They will come soon. Tell André to hold back dinner. And ask him if, by some chance, a bull from the pastures has broken, roaring, into the house.”

diff --git a/src/epub/text/three-paragraphs.xhtml b/src/epub/text/three-paragraphs.xhtml index e8f9823..1aeef91 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/three-paragraphs.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/three-paragraphs.xhtml @@ -16,7 +16,7 @@

The woman feverishly put back the loose masses of brown hair from her burning face.

“Jack, Jack, I don’t want to die! Who is that climbing in the window? Oh, it’s only Jack, and here is Jack holding my hand, too. How funny! We are going to the river tonight. The quiet, broad, dark, whispering river. Hold my hand tight. Jack, I can feel the water coming in. It is so cold. How queer it seems to be dead, dead, and see the trees above you.”

The humourist wrote: “On the dead square⁠—a cemetery lot.”

-

“Copy, sir, “yelled the small boy again. “Forms locked in half an hour.”

+

“Copy, sir,” yelled the small boy again. “Forms locked in half an hour.”

The man bit his pencil into splinters. The hand he held was growing cooler; surely her fever must be leaving. She was singing now, a little crooning song she might have learned at her mother’s knee, and her fingers had ceased moving.

“They told me,” she said weakly and sadly, “that hardships and suffering would come upon me for disobeying my parents and marrying Jack. Oh, dear, my head aches so I can’t think. No, no, the white dress with the lace sleeves, not that black, dreadful thing! Sailing, sailing, sailing, where does this river go? You are not Jack, you are too cold and stern. What is that red mark on your brow? Come, sister, let’s make some daisy chains and then hurry home, there is a great black cloud above us⁠—I’ll be better in the morning. Jack, if you’ll hold my hand tight. Jack, I feel as light as a feather⁠—I’m just floating, floating, right into the cloud and I can’t feel your hand. Oh, I see her now, and there is the old love and tenderness in her face. I must go to her. Jack. Mother, mother!”

The man wrote quickly: