Change sections to articles, remove volume from epub:type
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@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ abbr.era{
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font-style: italic;
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}
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section > header [epub|type~="epigraph"]{
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article > header [epub|type~="epigraph"]{
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display: inline-block;
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margin: auto;
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max-width: 80%;
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@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ section > header [epub|type~="epigraph"]{
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}
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@supports(display: table){
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section > header [epub|type~="epigraph"]{
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article > header [epub|type~="epigraph"]{
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display: table;
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}
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}
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-bird-of-bagdad" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-bird-of-bagdad" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Bird of Bagdad</h2>
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<p>Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg.</p>
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<p>Quigg’s restaurant is in Fourth Avenue—that street that the city seems to have forgotten in its growth. Fourth Avenue—born and bred in the Bowery—staggers northward full of good resolutions.</p>
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@ -61,6 +61,6 @@
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<p>Simmons looked up with a flashing eye.</p>
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<p>“A dead one!” said he.</p>
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<p>“Goot!” roared Hildebrant, rocking the table with giant glee. “Dot is right! You gome at mine house at 8 o’clock to der party.”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-blackjack-bargainer" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-blackjack-bargainer" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Blackjack Bargainer</h2>
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<p>The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old armchair. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street—the main street of the town of Bethel.</p>
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<p>Bethel rested upon the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.</p>
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@ -111,6 +111,6 @@
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<p>Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses kept pace, side by side, and the Colonel’s arm kept him steady. The little white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile away. Goree reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon Coltrane’s fingers, which held his bridle.</p>
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<p>“Good friend,” he said, and that was all.</p>
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<p>Thus did Yancey Goree, as he rode past his old home, make, considering all things, the best showing that was in his power.</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-call-loan" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-call-loan" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Call Loan</h2>
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<p>In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so inclined. The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed to him that he had more money than was decent. But when he had bought a watch with precious stones set in the case so large that they hurt his ribs, and a California saddle with silver nails and Angora skin <i xml:lang="es">suaderos</i>, and ordered everybody up to the bar for whisky—what else was there for him to spend money for?</p>
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<p>Not so circumscribed in expedient for the reduction of surplus wealth were those lairds of the lariat who had womenfolk to their name. In the breast of the rib-sprung sex the genius of purse lightening may slumber through years of inopportunity, but never, my brothers, does it become extinct.</p>
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@ -54,6 +54,6 @@
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<p>They were at the door of Merwin’s house. He kicked it open and fell over an old valise lying in the middle of the floor. A sunburned, firm-jawed youth, stained by travel, lay upon the bed puffing at a brown cigarette.</p>
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<p>“What’s the word, Ed?” gasped Merwin.</p>
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<p>“So, so,” drawled that capable youngster. “Just got in on the 9:30. Sold the bunch for fifteen, straight. Now, buddy, you want to quit kickin’ a valise around that’s got $29,000 in greenbacks in its in’ards.”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-chaparral-christmas-gift" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-chaparral-christmas-gift" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Chaparral Christmas Gift</h2>
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<p>The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.</p>
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<p>At the end of that time it was worth it.</p>
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@ -58,6 +58,6 @@
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<p>“Well, the Frio Kid’s got his dose of lead at last,” he remarked to the postmaster.</p>
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<p>“That so? How’d it happen?”</p>
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<p>“One of old Sanchez’s Mexican sheep herders did it!—think of it! the Frio Kid killed by a sheep herder! The Greaser saw him riding along past his camp about twelve o’clock last night, and was so skeered that he up with a Winchester and let him have it. Funniest part of it was that the Kid was dressed all up with white Angora-skin whiskers and a regular Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think of the Frio Kid playing Santy!”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-chaparral-prince" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-chaparral-prince" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Chaparral Prince</h2>
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<p>Nine o’clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen’s Hotel. Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman, scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups, making the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wood and water in that turbulent and depressing hostelry.</p>
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<p>The din of the day’s quarrying was over—the blasting and drilling, the creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the backing and shifting of the flatcars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone. Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers. Heavy odours of stewed meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a depressing fog about the house.</p>
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@ -80,6 +80,6 @@
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<p>“Rubbish!” cried Fritz Bergmann. “Fairy tales! How did you come from the quarries to my wagon?”</p>
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<p>“The Prince brought me,” said Lena, confidently.</p>
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<p>And to this day the good people of Fredericksburg haven’t been able to make her give any other explanation.</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-cheering-thought" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-cheering-thought" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Cheering Thought</h2>
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<p>A weary-looking man with dejected auburn whiskers, walked into the police station yesterday afternoon and said to the officer in charge:</p>
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<p>“I want to give myself up. I expect you had better handcuff me and put me into a real dark cell where there are plenty of spiders and mice. I’m one of the worst men you ever saw, and I waive trial. Please tell the jailer to give me moldy bread to eat, and hydrant water with plenty of sulphur in it.”</p>
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@ -20,6 +20,6 @@
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<p>“Durned if I believe he was, now I remember about that neighbor of mine,” said the penitent, beginning to brighten up. “You don’t know what a weight you’ve taken off my mind. I was just feeling like I was one of the worst sinners in the world. I’ll bet any man ten dollars he was talking right straight at that miserable, contemptible scalawag that sat right behind me. Say, come on and let’s go out and take somethin’, will you?”</p>
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<p>The officer declined and the weary-looking man ran his finger down his neck and pulled his collar up into sight and said:</p>
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<p>“I’ll never forget your kindness, sir, in helping me out of this worry. It has made me feel bad all day. I am going out to the racetrack now, and take the field against the favorite for a few plunks. Good day, I shall always remember your kindness.”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-christmas-pi" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-christmas-pi" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Christmas Pi</h2>
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<p>I am not without claim to distinction. Although I still stick to suspenders—which, happily, reciprocate—I am negatively egregious. I have never, for instance, seen a professional baseball game, never said that George M. Cohan was “clever,” never started to keep a diary, never called Eugene Walter by his first name, never parodied “The Raven,” never written a Christmas story, never—but what denizen of Never-Never Land can boast so much? Or would, I overhear you think, if he could?</p>
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<p>Always have I been on the lookout for the Impossible, always on the trail of the Unattainable. Someday, perhaps, I shall find a sleeping-car with a name that means something, an intelligent West Indian hallboy in a New York apartment building, a boardinghouse whose inmates occasionally smile, a man born in Manhattan, a 60-cent table d’hôte that serves six oysters the portion instead of four, a Southerner who leaves you in doubt as to his birthplace longer than ten minutes after the introduction, and myself writing a Christmas story. But that will happen ten days after the millennium, and as the millennium is to be magazineless—</p>
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@ -21,6 +21,6 @@
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<p>“Nothing of the kind,” I contradicted. “People don’t try to steal diamonds on a crowded street for any such purpose. I’m not a detective, as you might know by my guessing so correctly.”</p>
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<p>“Well,” he laughed, pulling out a bill and giving it to the waiter for the check; “it’s a good joke and I’ll let you in, though you can’t appreciate it. I thought if I hurled that brick in I’d get arrested quick and be sent to a cell or over on the island or something like that. You see, I’m a magazine writer and I wanted to get a real story—‘Yuletide on the Island’ or something. What’s your line, spoiler of a good story?”</p>
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<p>“I?” I said. “My name is John Horner, and I’m a plumber.”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-comedy-in-rubber" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-comedy-in-rubber" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Comedy in Rubber</h2>
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<p>One may hope, in spite of the metaphorists, to avoid the breath of the deadly upas tree; one may, by great good fortune, succeed in blacking the eye of the basilisk; one might even dodge the attentions of Cerberus and Argus, but no man, alive or dead, can escape the gaze of the Rubberer.</p>
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<p>New York is the Caoutchouc City. There are many, of course, who go their ways, making money, without turning to the right or the left, but there is a tribe abroad wonderfully composed, like the Martians, solely of eyes and means of locomotion.</p>
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@ -34,6 +34,6 @@
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<p>But the hour for the wedding came and went, and the bride and bridegroom came not. And impatience gave way to alarm and alarm brought about search, and they were not found. And then two big policemen took a hand and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers a crushed and trampled thing, with a wedding ring in its vest pocket and a shredded and hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet’s edge, ragged, bruised and obstreperous.</p>
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<p>William Pry and Violet Seymour, creatures of habit, had joined in the seething game of the spectators, unable to resist the overwhelming desire to gaze upon themselves entering, as bride and bridegroom, the rose-decked church.</p>
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<p>Rubber will out.</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-conditional-pardon" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-conditional-pardon" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Conditional Pardon</h2>
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<p>The runaway couple had just returned, and she knelt at the old man’s feet and begged forgiveness.</p>
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<p>“Yes, forgive us,” cried the newly wedded husband. “Forgive me for taking her away from you, but see, I have brought her back.”</p>
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@ -17,6 +17,6 @@
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<p>A careful inquiry has revealed the fact that Samson was the first man who rushed the growler.</p>
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<p>Better blow your own horn than one you haven’t paid for.</p>
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<p>If your rye offend you, buy a better quality.</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-cosmopolite-in-a-café" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-cosmopolite-in-a-café" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Cosmopolite in a Café</h2>
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<p>At midnight the café was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.</p>
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<p>And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites.</p>
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@ -39,6 +39,6 @@
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<p>“The man with the red tie” (that was my cosmopolite), said he, “got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from by the other guy.”</p>
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<p>“Why,” said I, bewildered, “that man is a citizen of the world—a cosmopolite. He—”</p>
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<p>“Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said,” continued McCarthy, “and he wouldn’t stand for no knockin’ the place.”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-departmental-case" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-departmental-case" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Departmental Case</h2>
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<p>In Texas you may travel a thousand miles in a straight line. If your course is a crooked one, it is likely that both the distance and your rate of speed may be vastly increased. Clouds there sail serenely against the wind. The whip-poor-will delivers its disconsolate cry with the notes exactly reversed from those of his Northern brother. Given a drought and a subsequently lively rain, and lo! from a glazed and stony soil will spring in a single night blossomed lilies, miraculously fair. Tom Green County was once the standard of measurement. I have forgotten how many New Jerseys and Rhode Islands it was that could have been stowed away and lost in its chaparral. But the legislative axe has slashed Tom Green into a handful of counties hardly larger than European kingdoms. The legislature convenes at Austin, near the centre of the state; and, while the representative from the Rio Grande country is gathering his palm-leaf fan and his linen duster to set out for the capital, the Panhandle solon winds his muffler above his well-buttoned overcoat and kicks the snow from his well-greased boots ready for the same journey. All this merely to hint that the big ex-republic of the Southwest forms a sizable star on the flag, and to prepare for the corollary that things sometimes happen there uncut to pattern and unfettered by metes and bounds.</p>
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<p>The Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History of the State of Texas was an official of no very great or very small importance. The past tense is used, for now he is Commissioner of Insurance alone. Statistics and history are no longer proper nouns in the government records.</p>
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<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Sharp soon rose to depart. She had arranged to remain in town until the policy was paid. The commissioner did not detain her. She was a woman, and he did not know just what to say to her at present. Rest and time would bring her what she needed.</p>
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<p>But, as she was leaving, Luke Standifer indulged himself in an official remark:</p>
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<p>“The Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma’am, has done the best it could with your case. ’Twas a case hard to cover according to red tape. Statistics failed, and History missed fire, but, if I may be permitted to say it, we came out particularly strong on Insurance.”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-dinner-at-" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-dinner-at-" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<header>
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Dinner at ⸻<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-3" id="noteref-3" epub:type="noteref">3</a></h2>
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<blockquote epub:type="epigraph">
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<p epub:type="z3998:sender">The Editors</p>
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</footer>
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</blockquote>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-disagreement" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-disagreement" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Disagreement</h2>
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<p>“Dat <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Bergman, vot run de obera house, not dread me right,” said a Houston citizen. “Ven I go dere und vant ein dicket to see dot ‘Schpider und dot Vly’ gompany de oder night, I asg him dot he let me in mit half brice, for I was teaf py von ear, and can not but one half of dot performance hear; und he dell me I should bay double brice, as it vould dake me dwice as long to hear de berformance as anypody else.”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
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</head>
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<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
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<section id="a-double-dyed-deceiver" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
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<article id="a-double-dyed-deceiver" epub:type="se:short-story">
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<h2 epub:type="title">A Double-Dyed Deceiver</h2>
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<p>The trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid’s fault, for he should have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the Kid was past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one’s credit at twenty is to blush unseen on the Rio Grande border.</p>
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<p>It happened in old Justo Valdos’s gambling house. There was a poker game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke had cleared away it was found that the Kid had committed an indiscretion, and his adversary had been guilty of a blunder. For, the unfortunate combatant, instead of being a Greaser, was a high-blooded youth from the cow ranches, of about the Kid’s own age and possessed of friends and champions. His blunder in missing the Kid’s right ear only a sixteenth of an inch when he pulled his gun did not lessen the indiscretion of the better marksman.</p>
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<p>Outside, the ancient landau of Don Santos Urique rattled to the door. The coachman ceased his bellowing. Señora Urique, in a voluminous gay gown of white lace and flying ribbons, leaned forward with a happy look in her great soft eyes.</p>
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<p>“Are you within, dear son?” she called, in the rippling Castilian.</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="es">Madre mia, yo vengo</i> [mother, I come],” answered the young Don Francisco Urique.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,12 +6,12 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-fatal-error" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-fatal-error" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Fatal Error</h2>
|
||||
<p>“What are you looking so glum about?” asked a Houston man as he dropped into a friend’s office on Christmas Day.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Same old fool break of putting a letter in the wrong envelope, and I’m afraid to go home. My wife sent me down a note by the hired man an hour ago, telling me to send her ten dollars, and asking me to meet her here at the office at three o’clock and go shopping with her. At the same time I got a bill for ten dollars from a merchant I owe, asking me to remit. I scribbled off a note to the merchant saying: ‘Can’t possibly do it. I’ve got to meet another little thing today that won’t be put off.’ I made the usual mistake and sent the merchant the ten dollars and my wife the note.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Can’t you go home and explain the mistake to your wife?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You don’t know her. I’ve done all I can. I’ve taken out an accident policy for $10,000 good for two hours, and I expect her here in fifteen minutes. Tell all the boys goodbye for me, and if you meet a lady on the stairs as you go down keep close to the wall.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-fog-in-santone" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-fog-in-santone" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Fog in Santone</h2>
|
||||
<p>The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I would rather not supply you,” he said doubtfully. “I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an hour ago.”</p>
|
||||
@ -85,6 +85,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Purest atmosphere—in the world—litmus paper all long—nothing hurtful—our city—nothing but pure ozone.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The waiter returns for the tray and glasses. As he enters, the girl crushes a little empty pasteboard box in her hand and throws it in a corner. She is stirring something in her glass with her hatpin.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why, Miss Rosa,” says the waiter with the civil familiarity he uses—“putting salt in your beer this early in the night!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-ghost-of-a-chance" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-ghost-of-a-chance" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Ghost of a Chance</h2>
|
||||
<p>“Actually, a <em>hod</em>!” repeated <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Kinsolving, pathetically.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Bellamy Bellmore arched a sympathetic eyebrow. Thus she expressed condolence and a generous amount of apparent surprise.</p>
|
||||
@ -70,6 +70,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“And look about, Brooks,” added Terence, a little anxiously, “for a silk handkerchief with my initials in one corner. I must have dropped it somewhere.”</p>
|
||||
<p>It was a month later when <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Bellmore and one or two others of the smart crowd were making up a list of names for a coaching trip through the Catskills. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Bellmore looked over the list for a final censoring. The name of Terence Kinsolving was there. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Bellmore ran her prohibitive pencil lightly through the name.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Too shy!” she murmured, sweetly, in explanation.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-good-story-spoiled" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-good-story-spoiled" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Good Story Spoiled</h2>
|
||||
<p>Few nights ago in a rather tough saloon in a little town on the Central Railroad, a big, strapping desperado, who had an unenviable reputation as a bad man generally, walked up to the bar and in a loud voice ordered everybody in the saloon to walk up and take a drink. The crowd moved quickly to the bar at his invitation, as the man was half drunk and was undoubtedly dangerous when in that condition.</p>
|
||||
<p>One man alone failed to accept the invitation. He was a rather small man, neatly dressed, who sat calmly in his chair, gazing idly at the crowd. A student of physiognomy would have been attracted by the expression of his face, which was one of cool determination and force of will. His jaw was square and firm, and his eye gray and steady, with that peculiar gray glint in the iris that presages more danger than any other kind of optic.</p>
|
||||
@ -15,6 +15,6 @@
|
||||
<p>The small man rose to his feet and walked coolly toward the desperado.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Excuse me,” he said in a low but determined tone, “I’m a little deaf and didn’t hear you the first time. Gimme whisky straight.”</p>
|
||||
<p>And another story was spoiled for the papers.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-green-hand" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-green-hand" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Green Hand</h2>
|
||||
<p>“I shall never again employ any but experienced salesmen, who thoroughly understand the jewelry business,” said a Houston jeweler to a friend yesterday.</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
@ -14,6 +14,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I see,” said the friend, “and he sold it to someone else and disappointed him.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“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.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-guarded-secret" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-guarded-secret" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Guarded Secret</h2>
|
||||
<p>It is time to call a halt upon the persistent spreaders of the alleged joke that a woman can not keep a secret. No baser ingratitude has been shown by man toward the fair sex than the promulgation of this false report. Whenever a would-be humorous man makes use of this antiquated chestnut which his fellow men feel in duty bound to applaud, the face of the woman takes on a strange, inscrutable, pitying smile that few men ever read.</p>
|
||||
<p>The truth is that it is only woman who can keep a secret. Only a divine intelligence can understand the marvelous power with which ninety-nine married women out of a hundred successfully hide from the rest of the world the secret that they have bound themselves to something unworthy of the pure and sacrificing love they have given them. She may whisper to her neighbor that <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Jones has turned her old silk dress twice, but if she has in her breast anything affecting one she loves, the gods themselves could not drag it from her.</p>
|
||||
@ -15,6 +15,6 @@
|
||||
<p>Adam’s conduct would have caused his name to be stricken from the list of every decent club in the country. And since that day, woman has stood by man, faithful, true, and ready to give up all for his sake. She hides his puny peccadilloes from the world, she glosses over his wretched misdemeanors, and she keeps silent when a word would pierce his inflated greatness and leave him a shriveled and shrunken rag.</p>
|
||||
<p>And man says that woman can not keep a secret!</p>
|
||||
<p>Let him be thankful that she can, or his littleness would be proclaimed from the housetops.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-guess-proof-mystery-story" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-guess-proof-mystery-story" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Guess-Proof Mystery Story</h2>
|
||||
<p>The most popular and recent advertising dodge in literature is the Grand Guess Contest Mystery Story. Everybody is invited to guess how the story will end, at any time before the last chapter is published, and incidentally to buy a paper or subscribe. It is the easiest thing in the world to write a story of mystery that will defy the most ingenious guessers in the country.</p>
|
||||
<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>
|
||||
@ -35,6 +35,6 @@
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title">Chapter <span epub:type="z3998:roman">V</span></h3>
|
||||
<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>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-harlem-tragedy" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-harlem-tragedy" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Harlem Tragedy</h2>
|
||||
<p>Harlem.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fink had dropped into <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Cassidy’s flat one flight below.</p>
|
||||
@ -61,6 +61,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Tell me, Maggie,” pleaded Mame, “or I’ll go in there and find out. What was it? Did he hurt you—what did he do?”</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Fink’s face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her friend.</p>
|
||||
<p>“For God’s sake don’t open that door, Mame,” she sobbed. “And don’t ever tell nobody—keep it under your hat. He—he never touched me, and—he’s—oh, Gawd—he’s washin’ the clothes—he’s washin’ the clothes!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-houston-romance" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-houston-romance" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Houston Romance</h2>
|
||||
<p>About two years ago one of the most popular young society men in Houston mysteriously disappeared. He had been the glass of fashion and the mold of form of the Magnolia City for several years. Especially was he noted for his exquisite and fashionable dress, and he was regarded as the leader in bringing out the latest and correct styles of clothing. No one in Houston ever saw a wrinkle in his elegantly fitting clothes, or a spot upon his snowy linen. He possessed sufficient means to enable him to devote his whole time to society and the art of dress, and in his whole bearing and manners was well nigh equal to the famous Beau Brummel.</p>
|
||||
<p>About a year ago it was noticed that he was beginning to grow preoccupied and reserved. His gay and gallant manner was as Chesterfieldian as ever, but he was becoming more silent and moody, and there seemed to be something weighing upon his mind. Suddenly, without a word of farewell, he disappeared, and no traces of him could be discovered. He left a good balance in the bank to his credit, and society racked its brains to conjecture some reason for his mysterious disappearance. He had no relatives in Houston, and with proverbial fickleness his acquaintances and butterfly friends soon allowed him to pass from their minds.</p>
|
||||
@ -24,6 +24,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“In heaven’s name,” said his friend, “what brought you here to bury yourself forever from the world; why did you leave your friends and pleasures to pass your days in this dreary place?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Listen,” said the monk, “and I will tell you. I am now supremely and ecstatically happy. I have attained the goal of my desires. Look at this robe.” He glanced proudly at the dark, severe robe that swept downward from his waist in graceful folds.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am one man,” he continued, “who has arrived at the fruition of his dearest earthly hopes. I have got something on at least that will not bag at the knees.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-lickpenny-lover" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-lickpenny-lover" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Lickpenny Lover</h2>
|
||||
<p>There, were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. Masie was one of them. She was eighteen and a saleslady in the gents’ gloves. Here she became versed in two varieties of human beings—the kind of gents who buy their gloves in department stores and the kind of women who buy gloves for unfortunate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the human species, Masie had acquired other information. She had listened to the promulgated wisdom of the 2,999 other girls and had stored it in a brain that was as secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Perhaps nature, foreseeing that she would lack wise counsellors, had mingled the saving ingredient of shrewdness along with her beauty, as she has endowed the silver fox of the priceless fur above the other animals with cunning.</p>
|
||||
<p>For Masie was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind her counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your hand over the tapeline for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you looked again you wondered how she had come by Minerva’s eyes.</p>
|
||||
@ -60,6 +60,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Oh, him?” said Masie, patting her side curls. “He ain’t in it any more. Say, Lu, what do you think that fellow wanted me to do?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Go on the stage?” guessed Lulu, breathlessly.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Nit; he’s too cheap a guy for that. He wanted me to marry him and go down to Coney Island for a wedding tour!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-little-local-colour" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-little-local-colour" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Little Local Colour</h2>
|
||||
<p>I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New York scenes and incidents—something typical, I told him, without necessarily having to spell the first syllable with an “<i epub:type="z3998:grapheme">i</i>.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, for your writing business,” said Rivington; “you couldn’t have applied to a better shop. What I don’t know about little old New York wouldn’t make a sonnet to a sunbonnet. I’ll put you right in the middle of so much local colour that you won’t know whether you are a magazine cover or in the erysipelas ward. When do you want to begin?”</p>
|
||||
@ -63,6 +63,6 @@
|
||||
<p>We said our farewells and boarded a home-bound car. We had a rabbit on upper Broadway, and then I parted with Rivington on a street corner.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, anyhow,” said he, braced and recovered, “it couldn’t have happened anywhere but in little old New York.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Which to say the least, was typical of Rivington.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-little-talk-about-mobs" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-little-talk-about-mobs" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Little Talk About Mobs</h2>
|
||||
<p>“I see,” remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black slouch hat, “that another street car motorman in your city has narrowly excaped lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting a cigar and walking a couple of blocks down the street.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Do you think they would have lynched him?” asked the New Yorker, in the next seat of the ferry station, who was also waiting for the boat.</p>
|
||||
@ -34,6 +34,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, sir, there are certain cases when people rise in their just majesty and take a righteous vengeance for crimes that the law is slow in punishing. I am an advocate of law and order, but I will say to you that less than six months ago I myself assisted at the lynching of one of that race that is creating a wide chasm between your section of country and mine, sir.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It is a deplorable condition,” said the New Yorker, “that exists in the South, but—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I am from Indiana, sir,” said the tall man, taking another chew; “and I don’t think you will condemn my course when I tell you that the colored man in question had stolen $9.60 in cash, sir, from my own brother.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-lunar-episode" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-lunar-episode" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Lunar Episode</h2>
|
||||
<p>The scene was one of supernatural weirdness. Tall, fantastic mountains reared their seamed peaks over a dreary waste of igneous rock and burned-out lava beds. Deep lakes of black water stood motionless as glass under frowning, honeycombed crags, from which ever and anon dropped crumbled masses with a sullen plunge. Vegetation there was none. Bitter cold reigned and ridges of black and shapeless rocks cut the horizon on all sides. An extinct volcano loomed against a purple sky, black as night and old as the world.</p>
|
||||
<p>The firmament was studded with immense stars that shone with a wan and spectral light. Orion’s belt hung high above.</p>
|
||||
@ -17,6 +17,6 @@
|
||||
<p>At length one prevailed. He seized his opponent, and raising him high above his head, hurled him into space.</p>
|
||||
<p>The vanquished combatant shot through the air like a stone from a catapult in the direction of the luminous earth.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s three of ’em this week,” said the Man in the Moon as he lit a cigarette and turned back into the house. “Those New York interviewers are going to make me tired if they keep this thing up much longer.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-madison-square-arabian-night" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-madison-square-arabian-night" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Madison Square Arabian Night</h2>
|
||||
<p>To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips brought the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there were two items bearing the same foreign postmark.</p>
|
||||
<p>One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, absorbed, for a long time. The letter was from another woman; and it contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered with innuendoes concerning the photographed woman.</p>
|
||||
@ -60,6 +60,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“The face, man—the subject—the original—what would you say of that?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“The face,” said Reineman, “is the face of one of God’s own angels. May I ask who—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“My wife!” shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the astonished artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. “She is traveling in Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint the picture of your life from it and leave the price to me.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,12 +6,12 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-matter-of-loyalty" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-matter-of-loyalty" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Matter of Loyalty</h2>
|
||||
<p>Two men were talking at the Grand Central depot yesterday, and one of them was telling about a difficulty he had recently been engaged in.</p>
|
||||
<p>“He said I was the biggest liar ever heard in Texas,” said the man, “and I jumped on him and blacked both his eyes in about a minute.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s right,” said the other man, “a man ought to resent an imputation of that sort right away.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“It wasn’t exactly that,” said the first speaker, “but Tom Achiltree is a second cousin of mine, and I won’t stand by and hear any man belittle him.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-matter-of-mean-elevation" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-matter-of-mean-elevation" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Matter of Mean Elevation</h2>
|
||||
<p>One winter the Alcazar Opera Company of New Orleans made a speculative trip along the Mexican, Central American and South American coasts. The venture proved a most successful one. The music-loving, impressionable Spanish-Americans deluged the company with dollars and “vivas.” The manager waxed plump and amiable. But for the prohibitive climate he would have put forth the distinctive flower of his prosperity—the overcoat of fur, braided, frogged and opulent. Almost was he persuaded to raise the salaries of his company. But with a mighty effort he conquered the impulse toward such an unprofitable effervescence of joy.</p>
|
||||
<p>At Macuto, on the coast of Venezuela, the company scored its greatest success. Imagine Coney Island translated into Spanish and you will comprehend Macuto. The fashionable season is from November to March. Down from La Guayra and Caracas and Valencia and other interior towns flock the people for their holiday season. There are bathing and fiestas and bull fights and scandal. And then the people have a passion for music that the bands in the plaza and on the sea beach stir but do not satisfy. The coming of the Alcazar Opera Company aroused the utmost ardour and zeal among the pleasure seekers.</p>
|
||||
@ -70,6 +70,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Thank you,” said Armstrong; “not just now, I believe. I’ve several things to attend to.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He walked out and down the street, and met Rucker coming up from the Consulate.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Play you a game of billiards,” said Armstrong. “I want something to take the taste of the sea level out of my mouth.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-midsummer-knights-dream" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-midsummer-knights-dream" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<header>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Midsummer Knight’s Dream</h2>
|
||||
<blockquote epub:type="epigraph">
|
||||
@ -63,6 +63,6 @@
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>The man who said he thought New York the finest summer resort in the country dropped into a café on his way home and had a glass of beer under an electric fan.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wonder what kind of a fly old Harding used,” he said to himself.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-midsummer-masquerade" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-midsummer-masquerade" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Midsummer Masquerade</h2>
|
||||
<p>“Satan,” said Jeff Peters, “is a hard boss to work for. When other people are having their vacation is when he keeps you the busiest. As old <abbr>Dr.</abbr> Watts or <abbr>St.</abbr> Paul or some other diagnostician says: ‘He always finds somebody for idle hands to do.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy Tucker, tried to take a layoff from our professional and business duties; but it seems that our work followed us wherever we went.</p>
|
||||
@ -51,6 +51,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘The Duchess shook me,’ he cries out, and slides out of the chair and weeps on the porch.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, of course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left the next morning. The landlord wouldn’t speak to us for two days, but when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up.</p>
|
||||
<p>“So me and Andy had a quiet, restful summer after all, coming away from Crow Knob with $1,100, that we enticed out of old Smoke-’em-out playing seven up.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-municipal-report" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-municipal-report" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<header>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Municipal Report</h2>
|
||||
<blockquote epub:type="epigraph z3998:poem">
|
||||
@ -159,6 +159,6 @@
|
||||
<p>
|
||||
<em>I wonder what’s doing in Buffalo!</em>
|
||||
</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-mystery-of-many-centuries" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-mystery-of-many-centuries" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Mystery of Many Centuries</h2>
|
||||
<p>Up to a few years ago man regarded the means of locomotion possessed by the fair sex as a sacred areanum into which it were desecration to inquire.</p>
|
||||
<p>The bicycle costume has developed the fact that there are two—well, that there are two. Whereas man bowed down and worshipped what he could not understand nor see, when the veil of mystery was rent, his reverence departed. For generations woman has been supposed in moving from one place to another to simply get there. Whether borne like Venus in an invisible car drawn by two milk white doves, or wafted imperceptibly by the force of her own sweet will, admiring man did not pause to consider. He only knew that there was a soft rustle of unseen drapery, an entrancing frou-frou of something agitated but unknown and the lovely beings would be standing on another spot. Whereat he wondered, adoring, but uninquisitive. At times beneath the lace-hemmed snowy skirts might be seen the toe of a tiny slipper, and perhaps the gleam of a silver buckle upon the arch of an instep, but thence imagination retired, baffled, but enthralled. In olden times the sweetest singers among the poets sang to their lutes of those Lilliputian members, and romance struck a lofty note when it wove the deathless legend of Cinderella and the slipper of glass. Courtiers have held aloft the silken slipper of the adored one filled with champagne and drank her health. Where is the bicyclist hero who would undertake the task of draining to the good health of his lady love her bicycle gaiter filled with beer?</p>
|
||||
@ -19,6 +19,6 @@
|
||||
<p>The other, day the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man saw a nice, clean-minded old gentleman, who is of the old school of cavaliers, and who is loath to see woman come down from the pedestal on which he has always viewed her.</p>
|
||||
<p>He was watching a lady bicycle rider go by. The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man asked him what he thought.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I never see a lady on a bicycle,” said he, “but I am reminded of God, for they certainly move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-narrow-escape" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-narrow-escape" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Narrow Escape</h2>
|
||||
<p>A meek-looking man, with one eye and a timid, shuffling gait, entered a Houston saloon while no one was in except the bartender, and said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Excuse me, sir, but would you permit me to step behind the bar for just a moment? You can keep your eye on me. There is something there I wanted to look at.”</p>
|
||||
@ -20,6 +20,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Yes, sir, I am feeling a little out of sorts today, and it always makes me real cross and impatient when I get that way. A little gin and bitters always helps me. It was six times, I think, that I fired, the time I was telling you about. Straight whisky would do if the gin is out.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“If I had any fly paper,” said the bartender, sweetly, “I would stick you on it and set you in the back window; but I am out, consequently, I shall have to adopt harsher measures. I shall tie a knot in this towel, and then count ten, and walk around the end of the bar. That will give you time to do your shooting, and I’ll see that you let out that same old yell that you spoke of.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Wait a moment,” said the meek man. “Come to think of it, my doctor ordered me not to drink anything for six weeks. But you had a narrow escape all the same. I think I shall go down to the next drug store and fall in a fit on the sidewalk. That’s good for some peppermint and aromatic spirits of ammonia, anyhow.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-new-microbe" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-new-microbe" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A New Microbe</h2>
|
||||
<p>There is a Houston man who is a great lover of science and an ardent student of her mysteries. He has a small laboratory fitted up at home and spends a great deal of his time in experimenting with chemicals and analyzing different substances.</p>
|
||||
<p>Of late he has been much interested in various germ theories, and has somewhat neglected his business to read Pasteur’s and Koch’s writings, and everything he could procure relating to sundry kinds of bacilli.</p>
|
||||
@ -27,6 +27,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Funny little round things, ain’t they?” she said. “Are they injurious to the system?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sure death. Get one of ’em in your alimentary canal and you’re a goner. I’m going to write to the London <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Lancet</i> and the New York Academy of Sciences tonight. What shall we call ’em, Ellen? Let’s see—Ellenobes, or Ellenites, or what?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, John, you wretch!” shrieked his wife, as she caught sight of the tin bucket on the table. “You’ve got my bucket of Galveston oysters that I bought to take to the church supper! Microbes, indeed!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-newspaper-story" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-newspaper-story" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Newspaper Story</h2>
|
||||
<p>At 8 <abbr class="time">a.m.</abbr> it lay on Giuseppi’s newsstand, still damp from the presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a theory related to the hypothesis of the watched pot.</p>
|
||||
<p>This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion and a household counsellor and vade mecum.</p>
|
||||
@ -41,6 +41,6 @@
|
||||
<p>The remaining leaves of the active journal also went loyally to the proving of its potency.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Johnny returned from school he sought a secluded spot and removed the missing columns from the inside of his clothing, where they had been artfully distributed so as to successfully defend such areas as are generally attacked during scholastic castigations. Johnny attended a private school and had had trouble with his teacher. As has been said, there was an excellent editorial against corporal punishment in that morning’s issue, and no doubt it had its effect.</p>
|
||||
<p>After this can anyone doubt the power of the press?</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-night-errant" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-night-errant" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Night Errant</h2>
|
||||
<p>One of the greatest of books is the daily life around us. All that the human mind can conceive; all that the human heart can feel, and the lips tell are encompassed in the little world about us. He that beholds with understanding eyes can see beneath the thin veil of the commonplace, the romance, the tragedy and the broad comedy that is being played upon the world’s stage by the actors great and little who tread the boards of the Theater of the Universe.</p>
|
||||
<p>Life is neither tragedy nor comedy. It is a mingling of both. High above us omnipotent hands pull the strings that choke our laughter with sobs and cause strange sounds of mirth to break in upon our deepest grief. We are marionettes that dance and cry, scarce at our own wills; and at the end, the flaring lights are out, we are laid to rest in our wooden boxes, and down comes the dark night to cover the scene of our brief triumph.</p>
|
||||
@ -64,6 +64,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Dat man what left de stuff, mammy, he couldn’t have been God, for God don’t get full; but if it wasn’t him, mammy, I bet a dollar he was Dan Stuart.”</p>
|
||||
<p>As the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man trudges back along the dark road to the city, he says to himself:</p>
|
||||
<p>“We have seen tonight good springing up where we would never have looked for it, and something of a mystery all the way from Alabama. Heigho! this is a funny little world.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-night-in-new-arabia" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-night-in-new-arabia" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Night in New Arabia</h2>
|
||||
<p>The great city of Bagdad-on-the-Subway is caliph-ridden. Its palaces, bazaars, khans, and byways are thronged with Al Rashids in divers disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled generosity. You can scarcely find a poor beggar whom they are willing to let enjoy his spoils unsuccored, nor a wrecked unfortunate upon whom they will not reshower the means of fresh misfortune. You will hardly find anywhere a hungry one who has not had the opportunity to tighten his belt in gift libraries, nor a poor pundit who has not blushed at the holiday basket of celery-crowned turkey forced resoundingly through his door by the eleemosynary press.</p>
|
||||
<p>So then, fearfully through the Harun-haunted streets creep the one-eyed calenders, the Little Hunchback and the Barber’s Sixth Brother, hoping to escape the ministrations of the roving horde of caliphoid sultans.</p>
|
||||
@ -143,6 +143,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Better make that vinegar raise three cents instead of two. I’ll be back in an hour and sign the letters.”</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>The true history of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid relates that toward the end of his reign he wearied of philanthropy, and caused to be beheaded all his former favorites and companions of his “Arabian Nights” rambles. Happy are we in these days of enlightenment, when the only death warrant the caliphs can serve on us is in the form of a tradesman’s bill.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-pastel" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-pastel" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Pastel</h2>
|
||||
<p>Above all hangs the dreadful night.</p>
|
||||
<p>He pleads with her.</p>
|
||||
@ -22,6 +22,6 @@
|
||||
<p>He pleads with her.</p>
|
||||
<p>At last she turns, conquered.</p>
|
||||
<p>He has refused to treat to oysters.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-personal-insult" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-personal-insult" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Personal Insult</h2>
|
||||
<p>Young lady in Houston became engaged last summer to one of the famous shortstops of the Texas baseball league.</p>
|
||||
<p>Last week he broke the engagement, and this is the reason why.</p>
|
||||
@ -22,6 +22,6 @@
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>The famous shortstop threw the book out the window, stuck out his chin and said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“No Texas sis can gimme de umpire face like dat. I swipes nine daisy cutters outer ten dat comes in my garden, I do.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-philistine-in-bohemia" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-philistine-in-bohemia" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Philistine in Bohemia</h2>
|
||||
<p>George Washington, with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square, forever signaling the Broadway cars to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But the cars buzz on, heedless, as they do at the beck of a private citizen, and the great General must feel, unless his nerves are iron, that rapid transit <span xml:lang="la">gloria mundi</span>.</p>
|
||||
<p>Should the General raise his left hand as he has raised his right it would point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the oppressed and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of national or personal freedom they have found a refuge here, and the patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their district, while he listens through his left ear to vaudeville that caricatures the posterity of his protégés. Italy, Poland, the former Spanish possessions and the polyglot tribes of Austria-Hungary have spilled here a thick lather of their effervescent sons. In the eccentric cafés and lodging-houses of the vicinity they hover over their native wines and political secrets. The colony changes with much frequency. Faces disappear from the haunts to be replaced by others. Whither do these uneasy birds flit? For half of the answer observe carefully the suave foreign air and foreign courtesy of the next waiter who serves your table d’hôte. For the other half, perhaps if the barber shops had tongues (and who will dispute it?) they could tell their share.</p>
|
||||
@ -48,6 +48,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“You have seen!” said <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Brunelli, laying one hand upon his collar bone. “I am Antonio Brunelli! Yes; I am the great ’Tonio! You have not suspect that! I loave you, Katy, and you shall marry with me. Is it not so? Call me ‘Antonio,’ and say that you will be mine.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Katy’s head drooped to the shoulder that was now freed from all suspicion of having received the knightly accolade.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Oh, Andy,” she sighed, “this is great! Sure, I’ll marry wid ye. But why didn’t ye tell me ye was the cook? I was near turnin’ ye down for bein’ one of thim foreign counts!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-poor-rule" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-poor-rule" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Poor Rule</h2>
|
||||
<p>I have always maintained, and asserted time to time, that woman is no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see. As “Harper’s Drawer” used to say in bygone years: “The following good story is told of Miss ⸻, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ⸻, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ⸻, and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> ⸻.”</p>
|
||||
<p>We shall have to omit “Bishop X” and “the <abbr>Rev.</abbr> ⸻,” for they do not belong.</p>
|
||||
@ -100,6 +100,6 @@
|
||||
<p>That night there were four instead of three of us sitting on the station platform and swinging our feet. <abbr class="name">C.</abbr> Vincent Vesey was one of us. We discussed things while dogs barked at the moon that rose, as big as a five-cent piece or a flour barrel, over the chaparral.</p>
|
||||
<p>And what we discussed was whether it is better to lie to a woman or to tell her the truth.</p>
|
||||
<p>And as all of us were young then, we did not come to a decision.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-professional-secret" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-professional-secret" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">
|
||||
<span>A Professional Secret</span>
|
||||
<span epub:type="subtitle">The Story of a Maid Made Over</span>
|
||||
@ -94,6 +94,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“As you say,” he made answer, “she appears to have recovered, as far as her friends can judge.”</p>
|
||||
<p>When he could spare the time. Doctor Prince again invaded the sanctum of the great Grumbleton Myers, and together they absorbed the poison of nicotine.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes,” said the great Myers, when the door was opened and Doctor Prince began to ooze out with the smoke, “I think you have come to the right decision. As long as none of the persons concerned has any suspicion of the truth, and is happy in the present circumstances, I don’t think it necessary to inform him that the <i>feuditis Beallorum et Rankinorum</i>—how’s the Latin, doctor?—has only been driven to Miss Rankin’s brain.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,11 +6,11 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-question-of-direction" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-question-of-direction" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Question of Direction</h2>
|
||||
<p>Do you mean to tell me,” gasped the horrified gentleman from Boston, “that this man you speak of was shot and killed at a meeting of your debating society, and by the presiding officer himself, during the discussion of a question, simply because he arose and made a motion that was considered out of order?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“He certainly was, sure,” said the colonel. “This is simply awful,” said the traveler. “I must make a note of this occurrence so that the people of my State can be apprised of the dreadful lawlessness that prevails in this section—a man shot down and killed at a social and educational meeting for the infringement of an unimportant parliamentary error! It is awful to contemplate.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s whatever,” said the colonel reflectively. “It is for a fact. But you might state, in order to do justice to our community and town, which is, as it were, the Athens of Texas, that the motion made by the deceased was in the direction of his hip pocket. Shall we all liquor?”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-ramble-in-aphasia" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-ramble-in-aphasia" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Ramble in Aphasia</h2>
|
||||
<p>My wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the front door. There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me to take care of my cold. I had no cold. Next came her kiss of parting—the level kiss of domesticity flavored with Young Hyson. There was no fear of the extemporaneous, of variety spicing her infinite custom. With the deft touch of long malpractice, she dabbed awry my well-set scarf pin; and then, as I closed the door, I heard her morning slippers pattering back to her cooling tea.</p>
|
||||
<p>When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to occur. The attack came suddenly.</p>
|
||||
@ -120,6 +120,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Of course,” said Doctor Volney.</p>
|
||||
<p>I got up from the couch. Someone had set a vase of white roses on the centre table—a cluster of white roses, freshly sprinkled and fragrant. I threw them far out of the window, and then I laid myself upon the couch again.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It will be best, Bobby,” I said, “to have this cure happen suddenly. I’m rather tired of it all, anyway. You may go now and bring Marian in. But, oh, Doc,” I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him on the shin—“good old Doc—it was glorious!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-retrieved-reformation" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-retrieved-reformation" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Retrieved Reformation</h2>
|
||||
<p>A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He had served nearly ten months of a four year sentence. He had expected to stay only about three months, at the longest. When a man with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the “stir” it is hardly worthwhile to cut his hair.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, Valentine,” said the warden, “you’ll go out in the morning. Brace up, and make a man of yourself. You’re not a bad fellow at heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight.”</p>
|
||||
@ -78,6 +78,6 @@
|
||||
<p>And then Ben Price acted rather strangely.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Guess you’re mistaken, <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Spencer,” he said. “Don’t believe I recognize you. Your buggy’s waiting for you, ain’t it?”</p>
|
||||
<p>And Ben Price turned and strolled down the street.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-righteous-outburst" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-righteous-outburst" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Righteous Outburst</h2>
|
||||
<p>He smelled of gin and his whiskers resembled the cylinder of a Swiss music box. He walked into a toy shop on Main Street yesterday and leaned sorrowfully against the counter.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Anything today?” asked the proprietor coldly.</p>
|
||||
@ -15,6 +15,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Before you go out,” said the proprietor, “which you are going to do in about fifteen seconds, I am willing to inform you that I have a branch store on Trains Street, and was around there yesterday. You came in and made the same talk about your little girl, whom you called Daisy, and I gave you a wagon. It seems you don’t remember your little girl’s name very well.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The man drew himself up with dignity, and started for the door. When nearly there, he turned and said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Her name is Lilian Daisy, sir, and the wagon you gave me had a rickety wheel and some of the paint was scratched off the handle. I have a friend who tends bar on Willow Street, who is keeping it for me till Christmas, but I will feel a flush of shame on your behalf, sir, when Lilian Daisy sees that old, slab-sided, squeaking, secondhand, leftover-from-last-year’s-stock wagon. But, sir, when Lilian Daisy kneels at her little bed at night I shall get her to pray for you, and ask Heaven to have mercy on you. Have you one of your business cards handy, so Lilian Daisy can get your name right in her petitions?”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-ruler-of-men" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-ruler-of-men" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Ruler of Men</h2>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
@ -178,6 +178,6 @@
|
||||
<p>Now and then some passenger with a shred of soul and self-respect left to him turned to offer remonstrance; but the blue uniform on the towering figure, the fierce and conquering glare of his eye and the ready impact of his ham-like hands glued together the lips that would have spoken complaint.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the train was full, then he exhibited to all who might observe and admire his irresistible genius as a ruler of men. With his knees, with his elbows, with his shoulders, with his resistless feet he shoved, crushed, slammed, heaved, kicked, flung, pounded the overplus of passengers aboard. Then with the sounds of its wheels drowned by the moans, shrieks, prayers, and curses of its unfortunate crew, the express dashed away.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s him. Ain’t he a wonder?” said Kansas Bill admiringly. “That tropical country wasn’t the place for him. I wish the distinguished traveller, writer, war correspondent, and playright, Richmond Hobson Davis, could see him now. O’Connor ought to be dramatized.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-sacrifice-hit" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-sacrifice-hit" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Sacrifice Hit</h2>
|
||||
<p>The editor of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone Magazine</i> has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk, smiling benignantly and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed eyeglasses.</p>
|
||||
<p>“The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">Hearthstone</i>,” he will say, “does not employ a staff of readers. We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types of the various classes of our readers.”</p>
|
||||
@ -43,6 +43,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Say, you!” said the office boy confidentially, “your name’s Slayton, ain’t it? I guess I mixed cases on you without meanin’ to do it. The boss give me some manuscript to hand around the other day and I got the ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it’s all right, though.”</p>
|
||||
<p>And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript, under the title <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Love Is All</i>, the janitor’s comment scribbled with a piece of charcoal:</p>
|
||||
<p>“The ⸻ you say!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-service-of-love" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-service-of-love" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Service of Love</h2>
|
||||
<p>When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard.</p>
|
||||
<p>That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older than the great wall of China.</p>
|
||||
@ -60,6 +60,6 @@
|
||||
<p>And then they both laughed, and Joe began:</p>
|
||||
<p>“When one loves one’s Art no service seems—”</p>
|
||||
<p>But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. “No,” she said—“just ‘When one loves.’ ”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-slight-mistake" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-slight-mistake" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Slight Mistake</h2>
|
||||
<p>An ordinary-looking man wearing a last season’s negligee shirt stepped into the business office and unrolled a strip of manuscript some three feet long.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I wanted to see you about this little thing I want to publish in the paper. There are fifteen verses besides the other reading matter. The verses are on spring. My handwriting is a trifle illegible and I may have to read it over to you. This is the way it runs:</p>
|
||||
@ -52,6 +52,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Then why in thunder don’t you get into some decent business, instead of going around writing confounded trash and reading it to busy people? Ain’t you got any manhood about you?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Excuse me for troubling you,” said the ordinary-looking man, as he walked toward the door. “I tell you how it is. I cleared over $80,000 last year on these little things I write. I am placing my spring and summer ads for the Sarsaparilla firm of which I am a member. I had decided to place about $1,000 in advertising in this town. I will see the other papers you spoke of. Good morning!”</p>
|
||||
<p>The business manager has since become so cautious that all the amateur poets in the city now practice reading their verses to him, and he listens without a murmur.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-snapshot-at-the-president" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-snapshot-at-the-president" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Snapshot at the President</h2>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>(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.</p>
|
||||
@ -70,6 +70,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“When you get back to Texas,” said the President, rising, “you must write to me. Your visit has awakened in me quite an interest in your State which I fear I have not given the attention it deserves. There are many historical and otherwise interesting places that you have revived in my recollection—the Alamo, where Davy Jones fell; Goliad, Sam Houston’s surrender to Montezuma, the petrified boom found near Austin, five-cent cotton and the Siamese Democratic platform born in Dallas. I should so much like to see the gals in Galveston, and go to the wake in Waco. I am glad I met you. Turn to the left as you enter the hall and keep straight on out.” I made a low bow to signify that the interview was at an end, and withdrew immediately. I had no difficulty in leaving the building as soon as I was outside.</p>
|
||||
<p>I hurried downtown in order to obtain refreshments at some place where viands had been placed upon the free list.</p>
|
||||
<p>I shall not describe my journey back to Austin. I lost my return ticket somewhere in the White House, and was forced to return home in a manner not especially beneficial to my shoes. Everybody was well in Washington when I left, and all send their love.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-sporting-interest" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-sporting-interest" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Sporting Interest</h2>
|
||||
<p>It is a busy scene in the rear of one of Houston’s greatest manufacturing establishments. A number of workmen are busy raising some heavy object by means of blocks and tackles. Somehow, a rope is worn in two by friction, and a derrick falls. There is a hurried scrambling out of the way, a loud jarring crash, a cloud of dust, and a man stretched out dead beneath the heavy timbers.</p>
|
||||
<p>The others gather round and with herculean efforts drag the beams from across his mangled form. There is a hoarse murmur of pity from rough but kindly breasts, and the question runs around the group, “Who is to tell her?”</p>
|
||||
@ -20,6 +20,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Derrick fell,” says Mike.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then I’ve lost my bet,” she says. “I thought sure it would be whisky.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Life, messieurs, is full of disappointments.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-startling-demonstration" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-startling-demonstration" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Startling Demonstration</h2>
|
||||
<p>What a terrible state of affairs it would be if we could read each other’s minds! It is safe to say that if such were the case, most of us would be afraid to think above a whisper.</p>
|
||||
<p>As an illustration, a case might be cited that occurred in Houston. Some months ago a very charming young lady came to this city giving exhibitions in mind reading, and proved herself to be marvelously gifted in that respect. She easily read the thoughts of the audience, finding many articles hidden by simply holding the hand of the person secreting them, and read sentences written on little slips of paper by some at a considerable distance from her.</p>
|
||||
@ -14,6 +14,6 @@
|
||||
<p>One evening they were sitting on the porch of their residence holding each other’s hands, and wrapt in the close communion of mutual love, when she suddenly rose and knocked him down the steps with a large flowerpot. He arose astonished, with a big bump on his head, and asked her, if it were not too much trouble, to explain.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You can’t fool me,” she said with flashing eyes. “You were thinking of a redheaded girl named Maud with a gold plug in her front tooth and a light pink waist and a black silk skirt on Rusk Avenue, standing under a cedar bush chewing gum at twenty minutes to eight with your arm around her waist and calling her ‘sweetness,’ while she fooled with your watch chain and said: ‘Oh, George, give me a chance to breathe,’ and her mother was calling her to supper. Don’t you dare to deny it. Now, when you can get your mind on something better than that, you can come in the house and not before.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Then the door slammed and George and the broken flowerpot were alone.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-story-for-men" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-story-for-men" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Story for Men</h2>
|
||||
<p>This little story will be a disappointment to women who read it. They will all say: “I don’t see anything in that.” Probably there isn’t much.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Jessamine lives in Houston. You can meet any number of ladies every day out walking on Main Street that resemble her very much. She is not famous or extraordinary in any way. She has a nice family, is in moderate circumstances and lives in her own house. I would call her an average woman if that did not imply that some were below the average, which would be an ungallant insinuation. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Jessamine is a genuine woman. She always steps on a street car with her left foot first, wears her snowiest lace-trimmed sub-skirts on muddy days, and can cut a magazine, wind a clock, pick walnuts, open a trunk and clean out an inkstand, all with a hairpin. She can take twenty dollars worth of trimming and make over an old dress so you couldn’t tell it from a brand new fifteen dollar one. She is intelligent, reads the newspapers regularly and once cut a cooking recipe out of an old magazine that took the prize offered by a newspaper for the best original directions for making a green tomato pie. Her husband has such confidence in her household management that he trusts her with the entire housekeeping, sometimes leaving her in charge until a late hour of the night.</p>
|
||||
@ -27,6 +27,6 @@
|
||||
<p>She hastily put on her hat and cloak and said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, be good children till I come back.” Then she went out, locked the door and hurried away to <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Flutter’s.</p>
|
||||
<p>That is all.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-strange-case" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-strange-case" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Strange Case</h2>
|
||||
<p>A <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> reporter met a young Houston physician the other afternoon, with whom he is well acquainted, and suggested that they go into a neighboring café and partake of a cooling lemonade. The physician agreed, and they were soon seated at a little table in a quiet corner, under an electric fan. After the physician had paid for the lemonade, the reporter turned the conversation upon his practice, and asked if he did not meet with some strange cases in his experience.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Yes, indeed,” said the doctor, “many that professional etiquette will not allow me to mention, and others that involve no especial secrecy, but are quite as curious in their way. I had one case only a few weeks ago that I considered very unusual, and without giving names, I think I can relate it to you.”</p>
|
||||
@ -34,6 +34,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“It was simply to wear a pair of bloomers,” said the young physician. “You see by separating the opposing factions harmony was restored. The Adams and the Redmond divisions no longer clashed, and the cure of the patient was complete. Let me see,” continued the physician, “it is nearly half past seven, and I have an engagement to call upon her at eight. In confidence, I may say that she has consented to change her name to mine at an early date. I would not have you repeat what I have told you, of course.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“To be sure, I will not,” said the reporter. “But won’t you take another lemo—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“No, no, thank you,” said the doctor, rising hurriedly, “I must go. Good evening. I will see you again in a few days.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-strange-story" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-strange-story" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Strange Story</h2>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
<p>One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic, and John Smothers hurried downtown to get some medicine.</p>
|
||||
@ -25,6 +25,6 @@
|
||||
<p>The old man drew a bottle of medicine from his pocket and gave Pansy a spoonful.</p>
|
||||
<p>She got well immediately.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I was a little late,” said John Smothers, “as I waited for a street car.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,12 +6,12 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-sure-method" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-sure-method" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Sure Method</h2>
|
||||
<p>The editor sat in his palatially furnished sanctum bending over a mass of manuscripts, resting his beetling brow upon his hand. It wanted but one hour of the time of going to press and there was that editorial on the Venezuelan question to write. A pale, intellectual youth approached him with a rolled manuscript tied with a pink ribbon.</p>
|
||||
<p>“It is a little thing,” said the youth, “that I dashed off in an idle moment.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The editor unrolled the poem and glanced down the long row of verses. He then drew from his pocket a $20 bill and held it toward the poet. A heavy thud was heard, and at the tinkle of an electric bell the editor’s minions entered and carried the lifeless form of the poet away.</p>
|
||||
<p>“That’s three today,” muttered the great editor as he returned the bill to his pocket. “It works better than a gun or a club and the coroner always brings in a verdict of heart failure.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-technical-error" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-technical-error" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Technical Error</h2>
|
||||
<p>I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during the fact.</p>
|
||||
<p>I was on a visit to Sam Durkee’s ranch, where I had a great time falling off unmanicured ponies and waving my bare hand at the lower jaws of wolves about two miles away. Sam was a hardened person of about twenty-five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with perfect equanimity, though often with reluctance.</p>
|
||||
@ -66,6 +66,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“There’s a code,” I heard Sam say, either to me or to himself, “that won’t let you shoot a man in the company of a woman; but, by thunder, there ain’t one to keep you from killing a woman in the company of a man!”</p>
|
||||
<p>And, quicker than my mind could follow his argument, he whipped a Colt’s automatic from under his left arm and pumped six bullets into the body that the brown dress covered—the brown dress with the lace collar and cuffs and the accordion-plaited skirt.</p>
|
||||
<p>The young person in the dark sack suit, from whose head and from whose life a woman’s glory had been clipped, laid her head on her arms stretched upon the table; while people came running to raise Ben Tatum from the floor in his feminine masquerade that had given Sam the opportunity to set aside, technically, the obligations of the code.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-tempered-wind" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-tempered-wind" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Tempered Wind</h2>
|
||||
<p>The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight of Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window of a business block and holler, “Whoa, there! Whoa!” like you would in endeavoring to assuage a team of runaway mules.</p>
|
||||
<p>I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman, having his shoes shined, and a couple of delivery wagons hitched to posts. Then in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner, and runs to the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street at the imaginary dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs of the fictitious team of chimerical quadrupeds. And then <abbr class="name">B.</abbr> Skinner goes back up to the third-story room again, and I see that the lettering on the window is “The Farmers’ Friend Loan Company.”</p>
|
||||
@ -125,6 +125,6 @@
|
||||
<p>We pasted on the Chill Cure labels about half an hour and Buck says:</p>
|
||||
<p>“Making an honest livin’s better than that Wall Street, anyhow; ain’t it, Pick?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You bet,” says I.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-tragedy" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-tragedy" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Tragedy</h2>
|
||||
<p>“By the beard of the Prophet. Oh, Scheherezade, right well hast thou done,” said the Caliph, leaning back and biting off the end of a three-for.</p>
|
||||
<p>For one thousand nights Scheherezade <abbr>No.</abbr> 2, daughter of the Grand Vizier, had sat at the feet of the mighty Caliph of the Indies relating tales that held the court entranced and breathless.</p>
|
||||
@ -23,6 +23,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“I have said it, oh, Caliph. It is too gross.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The Caliph made a sign: Mesrour, the executioner, whirled his scimeter through the air and the head of Scheherezade rolled upon the floor. The Caliph pulled his beard and muttered softly to himself:</p>
|
||||
<p>“I knew all the time that 288 is two gross, but puns don’t go anywhere in my jurisdiction at present.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,11 +6,11 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-universal-favorite" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-universal-favorite" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Universal Favorite</h2>
|
||||
<p>The most popular and best loved young lady in the United States is Miss Annie Williams of Philadelphia. Her picture is possessed by more men, and is more eagerly sought after than that of Lillian Russell, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Langtry, or any other famous beauty. There is more demand for her pictures than for the counterfeit presentments of all the famous men and women in the world combined. And yet she is a modest, charming, and rather retiring young lady, with a face less beautiful than of a clear and classic outline.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Williams is soon to be married, but it is expected that the struggle for her pictures will go on as usual.</p>
|
||||
<p>She is the lady the profile of whose face served as the model for the head of Liberty on our silver dollar.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-valedictory" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-valedictory" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<header>
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Valedictory</h2>
|
||||
<blockquote epub:type="epigraph">
|
||||
@ -24,6 +24,6 @@
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>We really intended our light to burn for years, and to have the wick snuffed so quickly, although done in sorrowing kindness, causes us to sputter and smoke a little as we go out.</p>
|
||||
<p>When the true Messiah comes along and shies his valise over to the night clerk, and turns back his cuffs ready to fill the long-felt want; if he should ever hear the whoops of those unappreciative critics who would crucify him, these few lines may teach him to fly to Brenham where his papa, the great intellectual lord of the universe, will protect him.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,11 +6,11 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-villainous-trick" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-villainous-trick" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Villainous Trick</h2>
|
||||
<p>When it becomes necessary for an actor to write a letter during the performance of a play, it is a custom to read the words aloud as he writes them. It is necessary to do this in order that the audience may be apprised of its contents, otherwise the clearness of the plot might be obscured. The writing of a letter upon the stage, therefore, generally has an important bearing upon the situation being presented, and of course the writer is forced to read aloud what he writes for the benefit of the audience. During the production of “Monbars” in Houston some days ago, the gentleman who assumed the character of the heavy villain took advantage of a situation of this description in a most cowardly manner.</p>
|
||||
<p>In the last act, Mantell, as Monbars, writes a letter of vital importance, and, as customary, reads the lines aloud as he writes them. The villain hides behind the curtains of a couch and listens in fiendish glee to the contents of the letter as imparted by <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Mantell in strict confidence to the audience. He then uses the information obtained in this underhanded manner to further his own devilish designs.</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Mantell ought not to allow this. A man who is a member of his own company, and who, no doubt is drawing a good salary, should be above taking a mean advantage of a mere stage technicality.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="a-years-supply" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="a-years-supply" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">A Years Supply</h2>
|
||||
<p>He was one of the city’s wealthiest men, but he made no ostentatious display of his wealth. A little, thin, poorly clad girl stood looking in the window of the restaurant at the good things to eat. The man approached and touched her on the shoulder.</p>
|
||||
<p>“What is your name, little girl?” he asked.</p>
|
||||
@ -28,6 +28,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Oh, see, mama!” she cried. “A gentleman gave me this. He said it would last us a whole year.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The pale woman unrolled the package with trembling hands.</p>
|
||||
<p>It was a nice new calendar.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="according-to-their-lights" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="according-to-their-lights" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">According to Their Lights</h2>
|
||||
<p>Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic alma mater.</p>
|
||||
<p>The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high and profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his badge and buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the solid pieces of real estate that his frugality had enabled him to accumulate. The passing of the flood left him low and dry. One month after his dishabilitation a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck from his free-lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from her nest, and cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after that he acquired a pair of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and wrote complaining letters to the newspapers. And then he fought the attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who tried to give him a bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of an Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex Street, and quoting the words of a song book ballad.</p>
|
||||
@ -69,6 +69,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Twenty feet longer than it was last night,” said Murray, looking up at his measuring angle of Grace Church.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Half an hour,” growled the Captain, “before we get our punk.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward slowly, its leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a hissing serpent, as they who had lived according to their lights closed up in the rear.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,10 +6,10 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="after-supper" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="after-supper" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">After Supper</h2>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mr.</abbr> Sharp: “My darling, it seems to me that every year that passes over your head but brings out some new charm, some hidden beauty, some added grace. There is a look in your eyes tonight that is as charming and girllike as when I first met you. What a blessing it is when two hearts can grow but fonder as time flies. You are scarcely less beautiful now than when—”</p>
|
||||
<p><abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Sharp: “I had forgotten it was lodge night, Robert. Don’t be out much after twelve, if you can help it.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="after-twenty-years" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="after-twenty-years" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">After Twenty Years</h2>
|
||||
<p>The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few. The time was barely 10 o’clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind with a taste of rain in them had well nigh de-peopled the streets.</p>
|
||||
<p>Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed.</p>
|
||||
@ -44,6 +44,6 @@
|
||||
<p><span epub:type="z3998:salutation">Bob</span>: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar I saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn’t do it myself, so I went around and got a plainclothes man to do the job.</p>
|
||||
<p class="signature">Jimmy.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-adjustment-of-nature" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-adjustment-of-nature" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Adjustment of Nature</h2>
|
||||
<p>In an art exhibition the other day I saw a painting that had been sold for $5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the West named Kraft, who had a favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an unquenchable belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His theory was fixed around corned-beef hash with poached egg. There was a story behind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a fountain-pen. The idea of Kraft—but that is not the beginning of the story.</p>
|
||||
<p>Three years ago Kraft, Bill Judkins (a poet), and I took our meals at Cypher’s, on Eighth Avenue. I say “took.” When we had money, Cypher got it “off of” us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in, called for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence in Cypher’s sullenness and smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless soul he was either a prince, a fool or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten desk, covered with files of waiters’ checks so old that I was sure the bottomest one was for clams that Hendrik Hudson had eaten and paid for. Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon <span epub:type="z3998:roman">III</span> and the goggle-eyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his film. Now and then we paid up back scores.</p>
|
||||
@ -48,6 +48,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“We’ve bought a cottage in the Bronx with the money,” said he. “Any evening at 7.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then,” said I, “when you led us against the lumberman—the—Klondiker—it wasn’t altogether on account of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well, not altogether,” said Kraft, with a grin.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-afternoon-miracle" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-afternoon-miracle" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Afternoon Miracle</h2>
|
||||
<p>At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed rangers sweltered in a little ’dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful espionage upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican side.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bud Dawson, proprietor of the Top Notch Saloon, had, on the evening previous, violently ejected from his premises one Leandro Garcia, for alleged violation of the Top Notch code of behaviour. Garcia had mentioned twenty-four hours as a limit, by which time he would call and collect a painful indemnity for personal satisfaction.</p>
|
||||
@ -87,6 +87,6 @@
|
||||
<p>The <i xml:lang="es">cañoncito</i> was growing dusky. Beyond its terminus in the river bluff they could see the outer world yet suffused with the waning glory of sunset.</p>
|
||||
<p>A scream—a piercing scream of fright from Alvarita. Back she cowered, and the ready, protecting arm of Buckley formed her refuge. What terror so dire as to thus beset the close of the reign of the never-before-daunted Queen?</p>
|
||||
<p>Across the path there crawled a caterpillar—a horrid, fuzzy, two-inch caterpillar! Truly, Kuku, thou wert avenged. Thus abdicated the Queen of the Serpent Tribe—<i xml:lang="es">viva la reina!</i></p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-expensive-veracity" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-expensive-veracity" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Expensive Veracity</h2>
|
||||
<p>A Houston man who attended a great many of Sam Jones’s sermons was particularly impressed with his denunciation of prevaricators, and of lies of all kinds, white, variegated, and black.</p>
|
||||
<p>So strongly was he affected and in such fertile ground did the seed sown by the great evangelist fall, that the Houston man, who had been accustomed occasionally to evade the truth, determined one morning he would turn over a new leaf and tell the truth in all things, big and little. So he commenced the day by scorning to speak even a word that did not follow the exact truth for a model.</p>
|
||||
@ -19,6 +19,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Yes,” said Henry, “you do. It’s a good thing your horse has a blind bridle on, for if he got a sight of you he’d run away and break your neck.”</p>
|
||||
<p>His aunt glared furiously at him and drove away without saying a word.</p>
|
||||
<p>Henry figured it up afterward and found that every word he said to her cost him $8,000.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-inspiration" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-inspiration" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Inspiration</h2>
|
||||
<p>He was seated on an empty box on Main Street late yesterday evening during the cold drizzling rain. He was poorly clad and his thick coat was buttoned up high under his chin. He had a woeful, harassed appearance, and there was something about him that indicated that he was different from the average tramp who beats his way by lies and fraud.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> man felt a touch of sympathy and went up to him and said:</p>
|
||||
@ -26,6 +26,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Well, that makes more room everywhere. You just raise all your tenants’ rent on account of the extra space.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Young man, you’re a genius. I’ll put rents up twenty percent tomorrow.”</p>
|
||||
<p>And one more capitalist was saved.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-odd-character" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-odd-character" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Odd Character</h2>
|
||||
<p>A <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Reporter stood on the San Jacinto Street bridge last night. Half of a May moon swam in a sea of buttermilky clouds high in the east. Below, the bayou gleamed dully in the semi-darkness, merging into inky blackness farther down. A steam tug glided noiselessly down the sluggish waters, leaving a shattered trail of molten silver. Foot passengers across the bridge were scarce. A few belated Fifth-Warders straggled past, clattering along the uneven planks of the footway. The reporter took off his hat and allowed a cool breath of a great city to fan his brow. A mellow voice, with, however, too much dramatic inflection, murmured at his elbow, and quoted incorrectly from Byron:</p>
|
||||
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:poem">
|
||||
@ -50,6 +50,6 @@
|
||||
<p>He unrolled it, took something from it between his thumb and finger and thrust it into his mouth.</p>
|
||||
<p>The sickly, faint, sweet odor of gum opium reached the reporter.</p>
|
||||
<p>The mystery about the tramp was solved.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-opportunity-declined" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-opportunity-declined" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Opportunity Declined</h2>
|
||||
<p>A farmer who lives about four miles from Houston noticed a stranger in his front yard one afternoon last week acting in a rather unusual manner. He wore a pair of duck trousers stuffed in his boots, and had a nose the color of Elgin pressed brick. In his hand he held a sharpened stake about two feet long, which he would stick into the ground, and after sighting over it at various objects would pull it up and go through the same performance at another place.</p>
|
||||
<p>The farmer went out in the yard and inquired what he wanted.</p>
|
||||
@ -17,6 +17,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“You refuse to take $50,000 for de ground, den?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I do. Are you going to chop that wood, or shall I whistle for Tige?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Gimme dat axe, mister, and show me dat wood, and tell de missus to bake an extra pan of biscuits for supper. When dat Columbus and Houston grand trunk railway runs up against your front fence you’ll be sorry you didn’t take up dat offer. And tell her to fill up the molasses pitcher, too, and not to mind about putting the dish of cooking butter on de table. See?”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-original-idea" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-original-idea" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Original Idea</h2>
|
||||
<p>There is a lady in Houston who is always having original ideas.</p>
|
||||
<p>Now, this is a very reprehensible thing in a woman and should be frowned down. A woman should find out what her husband thinks about everything and regulate her thoughts to conform with his. Of course, it would not be so bad if she would keep her independent ideas to herself, but who ever knew a woman to do that?</p>
|
||||
@ -40,6 +40,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Zas d⸺d lie!” said Robert, as he threw a beer glass through the mirror. “Been down t’ office helpin’ friend pos’ up books ’n missed last car. Say, now, Susie, old girl, you owe me two beers from las’ time. Give ’em to me or I’ll kick down bar.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Robert’s wife was named Henrietta. When he made this remark she came around to the front and struck him over the eye with a lemon squeezer. Robert then kicked over the table, broke about half the bottles, spilled the beer, and used language not suited for the mailable edition.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ten minutes later his wife had him tied with the clothes line, and during the intervals between pounding him on the head with a potato masher she was trying to think how to get rid of her last great original idea.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-unfinished-christmas-story" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-unfinished-christmas-story" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Unfinished Christmas Story</h2>
|
||||
<p>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.—<b>Ed</b>.”]</p>
|
||||
<p>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.</p>
|
||||
@ -40,6 +40,6 @@
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p>[Here the manuscript ends.]</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-unfinished-story" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-unfinished-story" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Unfinished Story</h2>
|
||||
<p>We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing hypothesis; but there lingers yet some of the old, goodly terror of orthodoxy.</p>
|
||||
<p>There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme—chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field of pretty Polly’s small talk.</p>
|
||||
@ -54,6 +54,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Who are they?” I asked.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why,” said he, “they are the men who hired working-girls, and paid ’em five or six dollars a week to live on. Are you one of the bunch?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Not on your immortality,” said I. “I’m only the fellow that set fire to an orphan asylum, and murdered a blind man for his pennies.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-unknown-romance" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-unknown-romance" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Unknown Romance</h2>
|
||||
<p>The first pale star peeped down the gorge. Above, to illimitable heights reached the Alps, snow-white above, shadowy around, and black in the depths of the gorge.</p>
|
||||
<p>A young and stalwart man, clad in the garb of a chamois hunter, passed up the path. His face was bronzed with sun and wind, his eye was frank and clear, his step agile and firm. He was singing fragments of a Bavarian hunting song, and in his hand he held a white blossom of the edelweiss he had plucked from the cliff. Suddenly he paused, and the song broke, and dropped from his lips. A girl, costumed as the Swiss peasants are, crossed the path along one that bisected his, carrying a small stone pitcher full of water. Her hair was of the lightest gold and hung far below her trim waist in a heavy braid. Her eyes shone through the gathering twilight, and her lips, slightly parted, showed a faint gleam of the whitest teeth.</p>
|
||||
@ -25,6 +25,6 @@
|
||||
<p>Miss Augusta Vance had flown from the irritating presence of fussy female friends and hysterical relatives to her boudoir for a few moments’ quiet. She had no letters to burn; no past to bury. Her mother was in an ecstasy of delight, for the family millions had brought them places in the front row of Vanity Fair.</p>
|
||||
<p>Her marriage to Pelham Van Winkler was to be at high noon. Miss Vance fell suddenly into a dreamy reverie. She recalled a trip she had taken with her family a year before, to Europe, and her mind dwelt lingeringly upon a week they had spent among the foothills of the Alps in the cottage of a Swiss mountaineer. One evening at twilight she had gone with a pitcher across the road and filled it from a spring. She had fancied to put on that day the peasant costume of Babette, the daughter of their host. It had become her well, with her long braid of light-gold hair and blue eyes. A hunter had crossed the road as she was returning—an Alpine chamois hunter, strong, stalwart, bronzed and free. She had looked up and caught his eyes, and his held hers. She went on, and still those magnetic eyes claimed her own. The door of the cottage had opened and voices called. She started and obeyed the impulse to tear a bunch of gentians from her bosom and throw them to him. He had caught them, and springing forward gave her an edelweiss flower. Not since that evening had the image of that chamois hunter left her. Surely fate had led him to her, and he seemed a man among men. But Miss Augusta Vance, with a dowry of five millions, could not commit the folly of thinking of a common hunter of the Alps mountains.</p>
|
||||
<p>Miss Vance arose and opened a gold locket that lay upon her dressing case. She took from it a faded edelweiss flower and slowly crumpled it to dust between her fingers. Then she rang for her maid, as the church bells began to chime outside for the marriage.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-unsuccessful-experiment" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-unsuccessful-experiment" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An Unsuccessful Experiment</h2>
|
||||
<p>There is an old colored preacher in Texas who is a great admirer of the <abbr>Rev.</abbr> Sam Jones.<a href="endnotes.xhtml#note-2" id="noteref-2" epub:type="noteref">2</a> Last Sunday he determined to drop his old style of exhorting the brethren, and pitch hot shot plump into the middle of their camp, after the manner so successfully followed by the famous Georgia evangelist. After the opening hymn had been sung, and the congregation led in prayer by a worthy deacon, the old preacher laid his spectacles on his Bible, and let out straight from the shoulder.</p>
|
||||
<p>“My dearly belubbed,” he said, “I has been preachin’ to you fo’ mo’ dan five years, and de grace ob God hab failed to percolate in yo’ obstreperous hearts. I hab nebber seen a more or’nery lot dan dis belubbed congregation. Now dar is Sam Wadkins in de fo’th bench on de left. Kin anybody show me a no’counter, trashier, lowdowner buck nigger in dis community? Whar does the chicken feathers come from what I seen in his back yard dis mawnin’? Kin Brudder Wadkins rise and explain?”</p>
|
||||
@ -21,6 +21,6 @@
|
||||
<p>Bill Rodgers stood up and put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest. “I could name, sah,” he said, “a certain party who wuz run off ob Colonel Yancy’s fahm fo’ playin’ sebben up wid marked cya’ds, ef I choosed to.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Dat’s anudder lie,” said the preacher, closing his Bible and turning up his cuffs. “Look out, Bill Rodgers, I’m comin’ down dar to you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The preacher got out of his pulpit and made for Bill, but Miss Simpson got her hands in his wool first, and Sam Wadkins and Elder Hoskins came quickly to her assistance. Then the rest of the brothers and sisters joined in, and the flying hymn books and the sound of ripping clothes testified to the fact that Sam Jones’s style of preaching did not go in that particular church.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="an-x-ray-fable" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="an-x-ray-fable" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">An X-Ray Fable</h2>
|
||||
<p>And it came to pass that a man with a Cathode Ray went about the country finding out and showing the people, for a consideration, the insides of folks’ heads and what they were thinking about. And he never made a mistake.</p>
|
||||
<p>And in a certain town lived a man whose name was Reuben and a maid whose name was Ruth. And the two were sweethearts and were soon to be married.</p>
|
||||
@ -17,6 +17,6 @@
|
||||
<p>And the man and the maid opened the pieces of paper and saw written on one “Reuben” and on the other “Ruth,” and they were filled with joy and happiness, and went away with arms about each other’s waists.</p>
|
||||
<p>But the man with the Ray neglected to mention the fact that the photographs he had taken showed that Reuben’s head was full of deep and abiding love for Reuben and Ruth’s showed her to be passionately enamored of Ruth.</p>
|
||||
<p>The moral is that the proprietor of the Ray probably knew his business.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,12 +6,12 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="answers-to-inquiries" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="answers-to-inquiries" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Answers to Inquiries</h2>
|
||||
<blockquote epub:type="z3998:letter">
|
||||
<p><span epub:type="z3998:salutation">Dear Editor</span>: I want to ask a question in arithmetic. I am a school boy and am anxious to know the solution. If my pa, who keeps a grocery on Milam Street, sells four cans of tomatoes for twenty-five cents, and twenty-two pounds of sugar, and one can of extra evaporated apples and three cans of superior California plums, for only—</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>There! There! little boy; that will do. Tell your pa to come around and see the advertising manager, who is quite an arithmetician, and will doubtless work the sum for you at the usual rates.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="aristocracy-versus-hash" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="aristocracy-versus-hash" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Aristocracy Versus Hash</h2>
|
||||
<p>The snake reporter of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.magazine">The Rolling Stone</i> was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the <abbr class="initialism">YMCA</abbr> 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.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Can you tell me, Sir, where I can find in this town a family of scrubs?’</p>
|
||||
@ -25,6 +25,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Is there such a place in Austin?’</p>
|
||||
<p>“The snake reporter sadly shook his head. ‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘but I will shake you for the beer.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“Ten minutes later the slate in the Blue Ruin saloon bore two additional characters: 10.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="art-and-the-bronco" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="art-and-the-bronco" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Art and the Bronco</h2>
|
||||
<p>Out of the wilderness had come a painter. Genius, whose coronations alone are democratic, had woven a chaplet of chaparral for the brow of Lonny Briscoe. Art, whose divine expression flows impartially from the fingertips of a cowboy or a dilettante emperor, had chosen for a medium the Boy Artist of the San Saba. The outcome, seven feet by twelve of besmeared canvas, stood, gilt-framed, in the lobby of the Capitol.</p>
|
||||
<p>The legislature was in session; the capital city of that great Western state was enjoying the season of activity and profit that the congregation of the solons bestowed. The boardinghouses were corralling the easy dollars of the gamesome lawmakers. The greatest state in the West, an empire in area and resources, had arisen and repudiated the old libel or barbarism, lawbreaking, and bloodshed. Order reigned within her borders. Life and property were as safe there, sir, as anywhere among the corrupt cities of the effete East. Pillow-shams, churches, strawberry feasts and habeas corpus flourished. With impunity might the tenderfoot ventilate his “stovepipe” or his theories of culture. The arts and sciences received nurture and subsidy. And, therefore, it behooved the legislature of this great state to make appropriation for the purchase of Lonny Briscoe’s immortal painting.</p>
|
||||
@ -64,6 +64,6 @@
|
||||
<p>Away scuttled the San Saba delegation out of the hall, down the steps, along the dusty street.</p>
|
||||
<p>Halfway to the San Saba country they camped that night. At bedtime Lonny stole away from the campfire and sought Hot Tamales, placidly eating grass at the end of his stake rope. Lonny hung upon his neck, and his art aspirations went forth forever in one long, regretful sigh. But as he thus made renunciation his breath formed a word or two.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You was the only one, Tamales, what seen anything in it. It <em>did</em> look like a steer, didn’t it, old hoss?”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="at-arms-with-morpheus" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="at-arms-with-morpheus" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">At Arms with Morpheus</h2>
|
||||
<p>I never could quite understand how Tom Hopkins came to make that blunder, for he had been through a whole term at a medical college—before he inherited his aunt’s fortune—and had been considered strong in therapeutics.</p>
|
||||
<p>We had been making a call together that evening, and afterward Tom ran up to my rooms for a pipe and a chat before going on to his own luxurious apartments. I had stepped into the other room for a moment when I heard Tom sing out:</p>
|
||||
@ -47,6 +47,6 @@
|
||||
<p>I told him no. His memory seemed bad about the entire affair. I concluded that he had no recollection of my efforts to keep him awake, and decided not to enlighten him. Some other time, I thought, when he was feeling better, we would have some fun over it.</p>
|
||||
<p>When Tom was ready to go he stopped, with the door open, and shook my hand.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Much obliged, old fellow,” he said, quietly, “for taking so much trouble with me—and for what you said. I’m going down now to telegraph to the little girl.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="babes-in-the-jungle" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="babes-in-the-jungle" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Babes in the Jungle</h2>
|
||||
<p>Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says to me once in Little Rock: “If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to New York. In the West a sucker is born every minute; but in New York they appear in chunks of roe—you can’t count ’em!”</p>
|
||||
<p>Two years afterward I found that I couldn’t remember the names of the Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left ear; so I knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver’s advice.</p>
|
||||
@ -56,6 +56,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Did you see <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Morgan?” I asks. “How much did he pay you for it?”</p>
|
||||
<p>Silver sits down and fools with a tassel on the table cover.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I never exactly saw <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Morgan,” he says, “because <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Morgan’s been in Europe for a month. But what’s worrying me, Billy, is this: The department stores have all got that same picture on sale, framed, for $3.48. And they charge $3.50 for the frame alone—that’s what I can’t understand.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="barbershop-adventure" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="barbershop-adventure" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Barbershop Adventure</h2>
|
||||
<p>When the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man entered the shop yesterday the chairs were full of customers, and for a brief moment he felt a thrill of hope that he might escape, but the barber’s eye, deadly and gloomy fixed itself upon him.</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’re next,” he said, with a look of diabolical malevolence, and the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man sank into a hard chair nailed to the wall, with a feeling of hopeless despair.</p>
|
||||
@ -72,6 +72,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“ ‘As much like as two peas,’ said the man. ‘They were twins, and nobody could tell ’em apart from their faces or their talk. The only difference between ’em was that one of ’em was as bald-headed as a hen egg and the other had plenty of hair.’ ”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now,” said the barber as he poured about two ounces of bay rum down the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man’s shirt front, “that’s how I account for it. The bald-headed Plunket would come in my shop one time and the one with hair would come in another, and I never knew the difference.”</p>
|
||||
<p>When the barber finished the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man saw the African with the whisk broom waiting for him near the front door, so he fled by the back entrance, climbed a brick wall and escaped by a side street.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="bestseller" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="bestseller" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Bestseller</h2>
|
||||
<section id="bestseller-1" epub:type="chapter">
|
||||
<h3 epub:type="title z3998:roman">I</h3>
|
||||
@ -118,6 +118,6 @@
|
||||
<p>I glanced downward and saw the bestseller. I picked it up and set it carefully farther along on the floor of the car, where the raindrops would not fall upon it. And then, suddenly, I smiled, and seemed to see that life has no geographical metes and bounds.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Good-luck to you, Trevelyan,” I said. “And may you get the petunias for your princess!”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="between-rounds" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="between-rounds" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Between Rounds</h2>
|
||||
<p>The May moon shone bright upon the private boardinghouse of <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heydey, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort agents were blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder; hand-organs, fountains and pinochle were playing everywhere.</p>
|
||||
<p>The windows of <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Murphy’s boardinghouse were open. A group of boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German pancakes.</p>
|
||||
@ -62,6 +62,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“By the deported snakes!” he exclaimed, “Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been fightin’ for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner.</p>
|
||||
<p>Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Murphy was about to lock the door for the night.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="bexar-scrip-no-2692" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="bexar-scrip-no-2692" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Bexar Scrip No. 2692</h2>
|
||||
<p>Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see the General Land Office.</p>
|
||||
<p>As you pass up the avenue you turn sharp round the corner of the courthouse, and on a steep hill before you you see a medieval castle.</p>
|
||||
@ -136,6 +136,6 @@
|
||||
<p>On closer examination, in the left breast pocket of the skeleton’s coat, there was found a flat, oblong packet of papers, cut through and through in three places by a knife blade, and so completely soaked and clotted with blood that it had become an almost indistinguishable mass.</p>
|
||||
<p>With the aid of a microscope and the exercise of a little imagination this much can be made out of the letter; at the top of the papers:</p>
|
||||
<p>B⸺x a⸺ ⸺rip N⸺2⸺92.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="bill-nye" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="bill-nye" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Bill Nye</h2>
|
||||
<p>Bill Nye, who recently laid down his pen for all time, was a unique figure in the field of humor. His best work probably more nearly represented American humor than that of any other writer. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Nye had a sense of ludicrous that was keen and judicious. His humor was peculiarly American in that it depended upon sharp and unexpected contrasts, and the bringing of opposites into unlooked-for comparison for its effect. Again, he had the true essence of kindliness, without which humor is stripped of its greatest component part.</p>
|
||||
<p>Bill Nye’s jokes never had a sting. They played like summer lightning around the horizon of life, illuminating and spreading bright, if transitory, pictures upon the sky, but they were as harmless as the smile of a child. The brain of the man conceived the swift darts that he threw, but his great manly heart broke off their points.</p>
|
||||
@ -14,6 +14,6 @@
|
||||
<p>His was the child’s heart, the scholar’s knowledge, and the philosopher’s view of life. He might have won laurels in other fields, for he was a careful reasoner, and a close observer, but he showed his greatness in putting aside cold and fruitless discussions that have wearied the world long ago, and set himself the task of arousing bubbling laughter instead of consuming doubt.</p>
|
||||
<p>The world has been better for him, and when that can be said of a man, the tears that drop upon his grave are more potent than the loud huzzas that follow the requiem of the greatest conqueror or the most successful statesman.</p>
|
||||
<p>The kindliest thoughts and the sincerest prayers follow the great humanitarian—for such he was into the great beyond, and such solace as the hearty condolement of a million people can bring to the bereaved loved ones of Bill Nye, is theirs.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="brinkleys-practical-school-of-journalism" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="brinkleys-practical-school-of-journalism" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Binkley’s Practical School of Journalism</h2>
|
||||
<p>Last Tuesday afternoon a ragged and disreputable-looking man was noticed standing on a corner of Main Street. Several persons who had occasion to pass a second time along the street saw him still standing there on their return.</p>
|
||||
<p>He seemed to be waiting for someone. Finally a young man came down the sidewalk, and the ragged man sprang upon him without saying a word and engaged him in fierce combat.</p>
|
||||
@ -75,6 +75,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“I must tell you,” said the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man, “that I don’t believe your story at all.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The ragged man replied sadly and reproachfully: “Did I not pay my last dollar for refreshments while telling it to you? Have I asked you for anything?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Well,” said the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Post</i> Man, after reflecting a while, “it may be true, but—”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="blind-mans-holiday" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="blind-mans-holiday" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Blind Man’s Holiday</h2>
|
||||
<p>Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of Lorison. At one time he appeared to himself to be the feeblest of fools; at another he conceived that he followed ideals so fine that the world was not yet ready to accept them. During one mood he cursed his folly; possessed by the other, he bore himself with a serene grandeur akin to greatness: in neither did he attain the perspective.</p>
|
||||
<p>Generations before, the name had been “Larsen.” His race had bequeathed him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance of thrift and industry.</p>
|
||||
@ -165,6 +165,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Sir,” said the priest, “do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems so often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be taught to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must not compromise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best. You went to her with the finespun sophistry that peace could be found in a mutual guilt; and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought it worth the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful lie. I have known her since the day she was born; she is as innocent and unsullied in life and deed as a holy saint. In that lowly street where she dwells she first saw the light, and she has lived there ever since, spending her days in generous self-sacrifice for others. Och, ye spalpeen!” continued Father Rogan, raising his finger in kindly anger at Lorison. “What for, I wonder, could she be after making a fool of hersilf, and shamin’ her swate soul with lies, for the like of you!”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Sir,” said Lorison, trembling, “say what you please of me. Doubt it as you must, I will yet prove my gratitude to you, and my devotion to her. But let me speak to her once now, let me kneel for just one moment at her feet, and—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Tut, tut!” said the priest. “How many acts of a love drama do you think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what kind of figures do we cut, spying upon the mysteries of midnight millinery! Go to meet your wife tomorrow, as she ordered you, and obey her thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgiveness for the part I have played in this night’s work. Off wid yez down the shtairs, now! ’Tis late, and an ould man like me should be takin’ his rest.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="board-and-ancestors" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="board-and-ancestors" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Board and Ancestors</h2>
|
||||
<p>The snake reporter of the Post was wending his way homeward last night when he was approached by a very gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and an emaciated face.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Can you tell me, sir,” he inquired, “where I can find in Houston a family of lowborn scrubs?”</p>
|
||||
@ -25,6 +25,6 @@
|
||||
<p>The snake reporter shook his head sadly. “I never heard of any,” he said. “The boarding houses here are run by ladies who do not take boarders to make a living; they are all trying to get a better rating in Bradstreet’s than Hetty Green.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Then,” said the emaciated man desperately, “I will shake you for a long toddy.”</p>
|
||||
<p>The snake reporter felt in his vest pocket haughtily for a moment, and then refusing the proposition scornfully, moved away down the dimly lighted street.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,13 +6,13 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="book-reviews" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="book-reviews" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Book Reviews</h2>
|
||||
<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Unnabridged Dictionary by Noah Webster</i>, <abbr>L. L. D. F. R. S. X. Y. Z.</abbr></p>
|
||||
<p>We find on our table quite an exhaustive treatise on various subjects, written in <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Webster’s well-known, lucid, and piquant style. There is not a dull line between the covers of the book. The range of subjects is wide, and the treatment light and easy without being flippant. A valuable feature of the work is the arranging of the articles in alphabetical order, thus facilitating the finding of any particular word desired. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Webster’s vocabulary is large, and he always uses the right word in the right place. <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Webster’s work is thorough and we predict that he will be heard from again.</p>
|
||||
<p><i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Houston’s City Directory</i>, by Morrison and Fourmy.</p>
|
||||
<p>This new book has the decided merit of being non-sensational. In these days of erratic and ultra-imaginative literature of the modern morbid self-analytical school it is a relief to peruse a book with so little straining after effect, so well balanced, and so pure in sentiment. It is a book that a man can place in the hands of the most innocent member of his family with the utmost confidence. Its material is healthy, and its literary style excellent, as it adheres to the methods used with such thrilling effect by <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Webster in his famous dictionary, viz: alphabetical arrangement.</p>
|
||||
<p>We venture to assert that no one can carefully and conscientiously read this little volume without being a better man, or lady, as circumstances over which they have no control may indicate.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="brickdust-row" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="brickdust-row" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Brickdust Row</h2>
|
||||
<p>Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a gentleman—a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer Oldport, who was agent for the Blinker estate.</p>
|
||||
<p>“I don’t see,” said Blinker, “why I should be always signing confounded papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North Woods this morning. Now I must wait until tomorrow morning. I hate night trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some unidentifiable trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a monologueing, thumb-handed barber. Give me a pen that doesn’t scratch. I hate pens that scratch.”</p>
|
||||
@ -84,6 +84,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“The tenants have some such name for it,” said Lawyer Oldport.</p>
|
||||
<p>Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Do what you please with it,” he said harshly. “Remodel it, burn it, raze it to the ground. But, man, it’s too late I tell you. It’s too late. It’s too late. It’s too late.”</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="bulgers-friend" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="bulgers-friend" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Bulger’s Friend</h2>
|
||||
<p>It was rare sport for a certain element in the town when old Bulger joined the Salvation Army. Bulger was the town’s odd “character,” a shiftless, eccentric old man, and a natural foe to social conventions. He lived on the bank of a brook that bisected the town, in a wonderful hut of his own contriving, made of scrap lumber, clapboards, pieces of tin, canvas and corrugated iron.</p>
|
||||
<p>The most adventurous boys circled Bulger’s residence at a respectful distance. He was intolerant of visitors, and repelled the curious with belligerent and gruff inhospitality. In return, the report was current that he was of unsound mind, something of a wizard, and a miser with a vast amount of gold buried in or near his hut. The old man worked at odd jobs, such as weeding gardens and whitewashing; and he collected old bones, scrap metal and bottles from alleys and yards.</p>
|
||||
@ -63,6 +63,6 @@
|
||||
<p>“Hallelujah!” cried the sergeant.</p>
|
||||
<p>“And a new bass drum,” concluded Bulger.</p>
|
||||
<p>And then the sergeant made another speech.</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="buried-treasure" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="buried-treasure" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Buried Treasure</h2>
|
||||
<p>There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still until they are called upon specifically to rise?</p>
|
||||
<p>I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony, pretended my matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops—parted soon with my money in many ways. But there remained one rule of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. That was the Seeker after Buried Treasure. To few does the delectable furor come. But of all the would-be followers in the hoof-prints of King Midas none has found a pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise.</p>
|
||||
@ -106,6 +106,6 @@
|
||||
<p>For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room house in a live-oak grove, and a piano with an automatic player, and a good start toward the three thousand head of cattle is under fence.</p>
|
||||
<p>And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are put away in places where they cannot be found.</p>
|
||||
<p>But who cares for that? Who cares—who cares?</p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
||||
@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
|
||||
<link href="../css/local.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
|
||||
</head>
|
||||
<body epub:type="bodymatter z3998:fiction">
|
||||
<section id="buying-a-piano" epub:type="volume se:short-story">
|
||||
<article id="buying-a-piano" epub:type="se:short-story">
|
||||
<h2 epub:type="title">Buying a Piano</h2>
|
||||
<p>A Houston man decided a few days ago to buy his wife a piano for a Christmas present. Now, there is more competition, rivalry, and push among piano agents than any other class of men. The insurance and fruit tree businesses are mild and retiring in comparison with the piano industry. The Houston man, who is a prominent lawyer, knew this, and he was careful not to tell too many people of his intentions, for fear the agents would annoy him. He inquired in a music store only once, regarding prices, <abbr>etc.</abbr>, and intended after a week or so to make his selection.</p>
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<p>When he left the store he went around by the post-office before going back to work.</p>
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@ -26,6 +26,6 @@
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<p>“Confound you, you’re drumming for a piano, too, are you?” yelled the lawyer, drawing the stone from his pocket. He fired away and knocked the minister’s tall hat across the street, and kicked him in the shin. The minister believed in the church militant, and he gave the lawyer a one-two on the nose, and they clinched and rolled off the sidewalk on a pile of loose bricks. The neighbors heard the row and came out with shotguns and lanterns, and finally an understanding was arrived at.</p>
|
||||
<p>The lawyer was considerably battered up, and the family doctor was sent for to patch him. As the doctor bent over him with sticking-plaster and a bottle of arnica, he said:</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’ll be out in a day or two, and then I want you to come around and buy a piano from my brother. The one he is agent for is acknowledged to be the best one for sweetness, durability, style, quality, and action in the world.”</p>
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</section>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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Reference in New Issue
Block a user