THE seat was an empty starch-box on the Cross-Roads porch, its occupant
a barefoot boy with a torn straw hat pulled far down over his eyes. To
the casual observer one of the most ordinary of sights, but to one
possessed of sympathetic powers of penetration into a boy's inner
consciousness there was a suggestion of the tragic. Perkins's oldest had
that afternoon in school been told to write a composition on September.
It was to be handed in next morning. It was the hopelessness of
accomplishing the fact even in aeons, not to mention the limited time of
a dozen short hours, that had bound him, a little Prometheus, to the
starch-box, with the vulture of absolute despair tearing at his vitals.
Two other boys had been assigned the same subject, and the three had
kicked the dust up wrathfully all the way from the schoolhouse, echoing
an old cry that had gone up ages before from the sons of Jacob, under
the lash of the Egyptian, "How can we make bricks without straw?"
"Ain't nothin' to say 'bout September," declared Riley Hines, gloomily,
"and I'll be dogged if I say it. I'm goin' to get my sister to write
mine fer me. She'll do it ef I tease long enough, and give her something
to boot."
"I'll ask paw what to say," declared Tommy Bowser. "He won't write it
for me, but he'll sort o' boost me along. Then if it ain't what she
wants, _I_ won't be to blame. I'll tell her paw said 'twas all right."
This shifting of responsibility to paternal shoulders restored the
habitual expression of cheerfulness to Tommy's smudgy face, but there
was no corresponding smile on Sammy's. There was no help to be had in
the household of Perkins.
That was why he was waiting on the starch-box while Tommy was sent on an
errand. It was in the vain hope that Tommy would return and apply for
his "boost" and share it with him before darkness fell. He was a
practical child, not given to whimsical reflections, but as he sat there
in desperate silence, he began wondering what the different customers
would have to say if they were suddenly called upon, as he had been that
afternoon, to write about September.
Mrs. Powers, for instance, in her big crape bonnet, with its long wispy
veil trailing down her back. He was almost startled, when, as if in
answer to his thought, she uttered the word that was at the bottom of
his present trouble, the subject assigned him for composition.
"Yes, Mr. Bowser, September is a month that I'm never sorry to say
good-bye to. What with the onion pickle and peach preserves and the
house-cleaning to tend to, I'm nearly broke down when it's over. There's
so many odds and ends to see to on a farm this time of year, first in
doors and then out. I tell Jane it's like piecing a crazy quilt. You
can't never count on what a day's going to bring forth in September. You
may get a carpet up and beat, and have your stove settin' out waiting to
be put up, and your furniture in a heap in the yard, and the hired man
will have to go off and leave it all while he takes the cider-mill to be
mended. And you in a stew all day long for fear it'll rain before he
gets things under shelter.
"Then it's a sad time to me, too," she exclaimed with a mournful shake
of the head in the black bonnet. "It was in September I lost my first
and third husbands, two of the best that ever had tombstones raised to
their memory, if I do say it as oughtn't. One died on the sixteenth, and
his funeral was preached on the eighteenth, and the other died fifteen
years later on the twenty-third, and we kept him three days, on account
of waiting till his brother could get here from Missouri. So you see
that makes nearly a week altogether of mournful anniversaries for me
every September."
Another breath and she had reached the three tombstones, and talking
volubly on her favourite subject, she completed her purchases and went
out. But her conversation had not lightened the woes of the little
Prometheus on the starch-box. Despair still gnawed on. House-cleaning
worries and onion pickle, and reminiscences of two out of three departed
husbands, might furnish material for Mrs. Powers's composition, should
the fates compel her to write one, but there was no straw of a
suggestion for Sammy Perkins, and again he cried out inwardly as
bitterly as the oppressed of old had cried out against Pharaoh.
A man in a long, sagging linen duster was the next comer. He squeaked
back and forth in front of the counter in new high-heeled boots, and
talked incessantly while he made his purchases, with a clumsy attempt at
facetiousness.
"Put in a cake of shaving-soap, too, Jim," he called, passing his hand
over the black stubble on his chin. "County court begins to-morrer.
Reckon the lawyers will shave everything in sight when it comes to their
bills, but I want to be as slick as them. I'll be settin' on the jury
all week. Did you ever think of it, Jim, that's a mighty interesting way
to earn your salt? Jest set back and be entertained with the history of
all the old feuds and fusses in the county, and collect your two bucks a
day without ever turning your hand over. Good as a show, and dead easy.
"Only one thing, it sort o' spiles your faith in human nature. The
court stenographer said last year that in the shorthand he writes, the
same mark that stands for lawyer stands for liar, too. He! he! he! isn't
that a good one? You can only tell which one is meant by what comes
before it, and this fellow said he'd come to believe that one always fit
in the sentence as good as the other. Either word was generally
appropriate. You miss a lot of fun, Jim, by not getting on the jury. I
always look forrard to fall on that account."
No help for Perkins's oldest in _that_ conversation. He waited awhile
longer. Presently an old gentleman in a long-tailed, quaintly cut black
coat, stepped up on the porch. He had a gold-headed cane under his arm,
and the eyes behind the square-bowed spectacles beamed kindly on the
little fellow. He stopped beside the starch-box a moment with a friendly
question about school and the health of the Perkins household. The boy's
heart gave a jump up into his throat. The old minister knew everything.
The minister could even tell him what to write in his composition if he
dared but ask him. He opened his mouth to form the question, but his
tongue seemed glued in its place, and the head under the torn hat
drooped lower in embarrassed silence. His troubled face flushed to the
roots of his tow hair, and he let the Angel of Opportunity pass him by
unchallenged.
"Will you kindly give me one of those advertising almanacs, Mr. Bowser?"
inquired the parson, when his packages of tea and sugar had been
secured. "I've misplaced mine, and I want to ascertain at what hour
to-morrow the moon changes."
"Certainly, certainly!" responded the storekeeper with obliging
alacrity, rubbing his hands together, and stepping up on a chair to
reach the pile on a shelf overhead. "Help yourself, sir. I must answer
the telephone."
The parson, slowly studying the moon's phases as he stepped out of the
store, did not notice that he had taken two almanacs until one fell at
his feet. The boy sprang up to return it, but he waved it aside with a
courtly sweep of his hand.
"No, my son, I intended to take but one. Keep it. They are for general
distribution. You will find it full of useful information. Have you ever
learned anything about the signs of the Zodiac? Here is Leo. I always
take an especial interest in this sign, because I happened to be born
under it. I'm the seventh son of a seventh son, born in the seventh
month, and I always take it as a good omen, seven being the perfect
number. You know the ancients believed a man's star largely affected his
destiny. You will find some interesting historical events enumerated
under each month. A good almanac is almost as interesting to study as a
good dictionary, my boy. I would advise you to form a habit of referring
to both of them frequently."
With one of his rare, childlike smiles the good man passed on, and
Perkins's oldest was left with the almanac in his hands. For awhile he
studied the signs of the Zodiac, in puzzled awe, trying to establish a
relationship between them and the man they surrounded, whose vital
organs were obligingly laid open to public inspection, regardless of any
personal inconvenience the display might cause him.
Then he turned to the historical events. There was one for each day in
the month. On Sunday, the first, eighteen hundred and ninety-nine, had
occurred the Japanese typhoon. Friday, the sixth, sixteen hundred and
twenty, the _Mayflower_ had sailed. Mahomet's birth had set apart the
eleventh in five hundred and seventy. The founding of Mormonism,
Washington's Farewell, and the battle of Marathon were further down the
list, but it was all Greek to Perkins's oldest. Any one of these items
would have been straw for the parson. Out of the _Mayflower_, Mahomet,
Mormonism, or Marathon, each one of them the outgrowth of some
September, he could have pressed enough literary brick to build a fair
sky-scraping structure that would have been the wonder of all who gazed
upon it. This time the boy looked his Angel of Opportunity in the face
and did not recognise it as such.
The gate clicked across the road and he turned his head. Miss Anastasia
Dill was going up the path, her arms full of goldenrod and white and
purple asters. September was a poem to Miss Anastasia, but the boy
looked upon goldenrod and the starry asters simply as meadow weeds. The
armful of bloom brought no suggestion to him. On the morrow Riley Hines
would hand in two pages of allusions to them, beginning with a quotation
from Whittier's "Autumn Thoughts," and ending with a couplet from Pope,
carefully copied by Maria Hines from the "Exercises for Parsing" in the
back of her grammar.
Somebody's supper-horn blew in the distance, and, grown desperate by
Tommy's long absence and the lateness of the hour, he took his little
cracked slate from the strap of books on the floor beside him, and laid
it across his knees. Then with a stubby pencil that squeaked dismally in
its passage across the slate, he began copying bodily from the almanac
the list of historical events enumerated therein, just as they stood,
beginning with the Japanese typhoon on the first, and ending
"_Volunteer_ beat _Thistle_" on the thirtieth, eighteen hundred and
eighty-seven.
Then he began to copy a few agricultural notes, inserted as side remarks
for those who relied on their almanacs as guide-posts to gardening.
"Gather winter squashes now. They keep better when stored in a warm dry
place. Harvest sugar beets when the leaves turn yellowish green, etc."
He was bending painfully over this task when a shadow fell across his
slate, and, looking up, he saw the old miller looking over his shoulder.
"Doing your sums?" he asked, with a friendly smile. "Let's see if you
do them the way I was taught when I was a lad." He held out his hand for
the slate. There had been a bond of sympathy between the two ever since
Christmas eve, when a certain pair of skates had changed owners, and
now, although the boy's voice trembled almost out of his control, he
managed to stammer out the reply that he was trying to write a
composition.
The old man looked from the straggling lines on the slate, then at the
open almanac, then down at the boy's troubled face, and understood.
Drawing a chair across the porch he sat down beside him, and, catching
the furtive, scared side-glance cast in his direction, he plunged at
once into a story.
It was about a shepherd boy who went out to fight a giant, and the king
insisted on lending him his armour. But he couldn't fight in the heavy
helmet and the coat of mail. The shield was in his way, and the spear
more than he could lift. So he threw it aside, and going down to a
little brook, chose five small pebbles, worn smooth by the running
water. And with these in his hand, and only the simple sling he was
accustomed to use every day, he went out against the Philistine giant,
and slew him in the first round.
Perkins's oldest wondered what the story had to do with his
composition. He wasn't looking for a personal application. He had not
been brought up at Sunday schools and kindergartens. But all of a sudden
he realised that the miller meant him; that his depending on Tommy, or
the customers, or the almanac, to furnish him ideas, was like going out
in Saul's armour, and that he could only come to failure in that,
because it wouldn't fit him; that he could hit the mark the little
schoolmistress had in mind for him, only with the familiar sling-shot of
his own common every-day personal experiences.
Maybe the old miller recognised that it was a crisis in the little
fellow's life, for he stayed beside him with helpful hints and
questions, until the slate was full. When he carried it home in the
gloaming it no longer bore the items from the almanac. There were other
remarks straggling across it, not so well expressed, perhaps, but
plainly original. They were to the effect that September is the month
you've got to go back to school when you don't want to, 'cos it's the
nicest time of all to stay out-doors, neither too hot nor too cold.
There's lots of apples then, and it's the minister's birthday. He's the
seventh son of a seventh son, and Dick Wiggins says if you're that you
can pick Wahoo berries in the dark of the moon and make med'cine out of
them, that will cure the bone-break fever every time, when nothing else
in the world will. Then followed several items of information that he
had discovered for himself, in his prowls through the September woods,
about snakes and tree-toads, as to their habits at that season of the
year. It closed with a suggestive allusion to the delights of sucking
cider from the bung of a barrel through a straw.
Next day the little schoolmistress shook her head over the composition
that Riley Hines handed in, and laid it aside with a hopeless sigh. She
recognised too plainly the hand of Maria in its construction. The
sentiments expressed therein were as foreign to Riley's nature as they
would have been to a woodchuck's. She took up Tommy Bowser's. Alas,
four-syllabled words were not in Tommy's daily vocabulary, nor were the
elegant sentences under his name within the power of his composition.
Plainly it was the work of a plagiarist.
She went through the pile slowly, and then wrote on the blackboard as
she had promised, the names of the ten whose work was the best and most
original. It was then that Perkins's oldest had the surprise of his
life, for lo! his name, like Abou-ben-Adhem's, "led all the rest."
Again the Cross-Roads had taught him more than the school,--to depend
on the resources to which nature had adapted him, and never again to
attempt to sally forth in borrowed armour, even though it be a king's.
Chapter XII
IT was Cy Akers who carried the news to the schoolhouse, galloping his
old sorrel up to the open door just before the bell tapped for afternoon
dismissal. He did not dismount, but drawing rein, leaned forward in his
saddle, waiting for the little schoolmistress to step down from the desk
to the doorstep. The rows of waiting children craned their necks
anxiously, but only those nearest the door heard his message.
"Mr. Asa Holmes died this morning," he said. "The funeral is set for
to-morrow afternoon at four, and you can announce to the children that
there won't be any school. The trustees thought it would be only proper
to close out of respect for him, as he was on the school board over
thirty years, and has done so much for the community. He's one of the
old landmarks, you might say, about the last of the old pioneers, and
everybody will want to go."
Before she could recover from the suddenness of the announcement the
rider was gone, and she was left looking out across the October fields
with a lonely sense of personal loss, although her acquaintance with the
old miller had extended over only two short school terms.
A few minutes later the measured tramp of feet over the worn door-sill
began, and forty children passed out into the mellow sunshine of the
late autumn afternoon. They went quietly at first, awed by the tender,
reverent words in which the little schoolmistress had given them the
message to carry home. But once outside, the pent-up enthusiasm over
their unexpected holiday, and the mere joy of being alive and free on
such a day sent them rushing down the road pell-mell, shouting and
swinging their dinner-pails as they ran.
A shade of annoyance crossed the teacher's face as she stood watching
from the doorstep. She wished she had cautioned them not to be so noisy,
for she knew that their shouts could be plainly heard in the old house
whose gables she could see through a clump of cedars, farther down the
road. It was standing with closed blinds now, and she had a feeling that
the laughing voices floating across to it must strike harshly across its
profound silence.
But presently her face brightened as she watched the children running
on in the sunshine, in the joy of their emancipation. Part of a poem she
had read that morning came to her. She had thought when she read it that
it was a beautiful way to look upon death, and now it bore a new
significance, and she whispered it to herself:
"'Why should it be a wrench to leave this wooden bench?
Why not with happy shout, run home when school is out?'
"That's the way the old miller has gone," she said, softly. "His lessons
all learned and his tasks all done--so well done, too, that he has
nothing to regret. I'm glad that I didn't stop the children. I am sure
that's the way he would want them to go. Dear old man! He was always a
boy at heart."
She turned the key in the door behind her presently, and started down
the road to Mrs. Powers's, where she boarded. In every fence corner the
sumachs flamed blood-red, and across the fields, where purple shadows
trailed their royal lengths behind every shock of corn, the autumn
woodlands massed their gold and crimson against the sunset sky. She
walked slowly, loath to reach the place where she must go indoors.
The Perkins home lay in her way, and as she passed, Mrs. Perkins with a
baby on her hip, and a child clinging to her skirts, leaned over the
gate to speak to her.
"Isn't it sad," the woman exclaimed, grasping eagerly at this chance to
discuss every incident of the death and illness, with that love for
detail always to be found in country districts where happenings are few
and interests are strong.
"They sent for the family Tuesday when he had the stroke, but he
couldn't speak to them when they got here. They said he seemed to
recognise Miss Polly, and smiled when she took his hand. She seemed to
be his favourite, and they say she's taking it mighty hard--harder than
any of the rest. It's a pity he couldn't have left 'em all some last
message. I think it's always a comfort to remember one's dying words
when as good a person as Mr. Holmes goes. And it's always so nice when
they happen to be appropriate, so's they can be put on the tombstone
afterward. I remember my Aunt Maria worked my grandfather's last words
into a sampler, with an urn and weeping-willow-tree. She had it framed
in black and hung in the parlour, and everybody who came to the house
admired it. It's a pity that the miller couldn't have left some last
word to each of 'em."
"I don't think it was necessary," said the girl, turning away with a
choke in her voice, as the eloquent face of the old man seemed to rise
up before her. "His whole life speaks for him."
Mrs. Perkins looked after the retreating figure regretfully, as the
jaunty sailor hat disappeared behind a tall hedge. "I wish she hadn't
been in such a hurry," she sighed, shifting the baby to the other hip.
"I would have liked to ask her if she's heard who the pall-bearers are
to be."
At the turn in the road the little schoolmistress looked up to see Miss
Anastasia Dill leaning over her gate. She had just heard the news, and
there were tears in her pale blue eyes.
"And Polly's wedding cards were to have been sent out this next week!"
she exclaimed after their first words of greeting. "The poor child told
me so herself when she was here in August on a visit. 'Miss Anastasia,'
she said to me, 'I'm not going abroad for my honeymoon, as all my family
want me to do. I'm going to bring Jack back here to the old homestead
where grandfather's married life began. Somehow it was so ideal, so
nearly perfect, that I have a feeling that maybe the mantle of that old
romance will fall on our shoulders. Besides, Jack has never seen
grandfather, and I tell him it's as much of an education to know such a
grand old man as it is to go through Yale. So we're coming in October.
The woods will have on all their gala colours then, and I'll be the
happiest bride the sun ever shone on, unless it was my grandmother
Polly.' And now to think," added Miss Anastasia, tearfully, "none of
those plans can come to pass. It's bad luck to put off a wedding. Oh, I
feel so sorry for her!"
* * * * *
There is an undefined note of pathos in a country funeral that is never
reached in any other. The little schoolmistress felt it as she walked up
the path to the old house behind the cedars. The front porch was full of
men, who, dressed in their unaccustomed best, had the uneasy appearance
of having come upon a Sunday in the middle of the week. Their heavy
boots tiptoed clumsily through the hall, with a painful effort to go
silently, as one by one the neighbours passed into the old sitting-room
and out again. The room across the hall had been filled with rows of
chairs, and the women who came first were sitting there in a deep
silence, broken only by a cough now and then, a hoarse whisper or a
rustle, as some one moved to make room for a newcomer.
It was a sombre assembly, for every one wore whatever black her wardrobe
afforded, and many funeral occasions had left an accumulation of
mourning millinery in every house in the neighbourhood. But the limp
crape veils and black gloves and pall-like cashmere shawls were all
congregated in the dimly lighted parlour. In the old sitting-room it was
as cheerful and homelike as ever, save for the still form in the centre.
Through an open window the western sun streamed into the big,
hospitable room, across the bright home-made rag carpet. The old clock
in the corner ticked with the placid, steady stroke that had never
failed or faltered, in any vicissitude of the generations for which it
had marked the changes. No fire blazed on the old hearthstone that had
warmed the hearts as well as the hands of the whole countryside on many
a cheerful occasion. But a great bough of dogwood, laid across the
shining andirons, filled the space with coral berries that glowed like
live embers as the sun stole athwart them.
"Oh, if the old room could only speak!" thought Miss Anastasia, when her
turn came to pass reverently in for a last look at the peaceful face.
"There would be no need of man's eulogy."
But man's eulogy was added presently, when the old minister came in and
took his place beside the coffin of his lifelong friend and neighbour.
The men outside the porch closed in around the windows to listen. The
women in the back rows of chairs in the adjoining room leaned forward
eagerly. Those farthest away caught only a faltering sentence now and
then.
"A hospitality as warm as his own hearthstone, as wide as his broad
acres.... No man can point to him and say he ever knowingly hurt or
hindered a fellow creature.... He never measured out to any man a scant
bushel. Be it grain or good-will, it was ever an overflowing
measure...." But those who could not hear all that was said could make
the silent places eloquent with their own recollections, for he had
taken a father's interest in them all, and manifested it by a score of
kindly deeds, too kindly to ever be forgotten.
It was a perfect autumn day, sunny and golden and still, save for the
patter of dropping nuts and the dry rustle of fallen leaves. A purple
haze rested on the distant horizon like the bloom on a ripened grape.
Down through the orchard, when the simple service was over, they carried
their old friend to the family burying-ground, and, although voices had
choked, and eyes overflowed before, there was neither sob nor tear, when
the light of the sunset struck across the low mound, heaped with its
covering of glowing autumn leaves. For if grief has no part in the
sunset glory that ends the day, or in the perfect fulness of the autumn
time, then it must indeed stand hushed, when a life comes both to its
sunset and its harvest, in such royal fashion.
* * * * *
That evening at the Cross-Roads, Bowser lighted the first fire of the
season in the rusty old stove, for the night was chilly. One by one the
men accustomed to gather around it dropped in and took their usual
places. The event of the day was all that was spoken of.
"Do you remember what he said last Thanksgiving, nearly a year ago?"
asked Bowser. "It came back to me as I stood and looked at him to-day,
and if I'd never believed in immortality before, I'd 'a' had to have
believed in it then. The words seemed to fairly shine out of his face.
He said '_The best comes after the harvest, when the wheat goes to make
up blood and muscle and brain; when it's raised to a higher order of
life in man. And it's the same with me. At eighty-five, when it looks as
if I'd about reached the end, I've come to believe that "the best is yet
to be._"'"
There was a long pause, and Cy Akers said, slowly, "Somehow I can't
feel that he is dead. Seems as if he'd just gone away a while. But Lord!
how we're going to miss him here at the store."
"No, don't say that!" exclaimed Bud Hines, with more emotion than he had
ever been known to show before. "Say, how we're going to feel him! I
can't get him out of my mind. Every time I turn around, most, seems to
me I can hear him laugh, and say, 'Don't cross your bridge till you come
to it, Bud.' That saying of his rings in my ears every time I get in the
dumps. Seems like he could set the calendar straight for us, all the
year around. The winters wasn't so cold or the summers so hard to pull
through, looking at life through his eyes."
Perkins's oldest crept up unnoticed. He added no word, but deep in his
heart lay an impression that all the years to come could never erase;
the remembrance of a kindly old man who had given him a new gospel, in
that one phrase, "A brother to Santa Claus;" who had taught him to go
out against his Philistines with simple directness of aim and whatever
lay at hand; who had left behind him the philosophy of a cheerful
optimist, and the example of a sweet simple life, unswerving in its
loyalty to duty and to truth.
* * * * *
Over in the old homestead, Polly, standing in the firelight, fair and
slender in her black gown, looked up at the tall young fellow beside
her, and placed two little books in his hands. The old house was not her
only heritage. The little atlas of the heavens was hers also. Standing
there in the room where the beloved presence seemed to have left its
benediction, Polly told the story of the love that had outlived Death.
Then across the yellowed page of the old grammar where the faded violets
lay, two hands met in the same sure clasp that had joined the souls of
those older lovers, who somewhere beyond the stars were still repeating
the old conjugation--"we love--_for ever_!"
THE END.
L. C. Page & Company's
Announcement List
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Herald_ said: "There is color, there is sumptuous word-painting in these
pages; the action is terrific at times; vividness and life are in every
part; brilliant descriptions entertain the reader; mystic scenes and
prophecies give a singular fascination to the tale, which is strong and
forceful in its portrayal."
=Hester of the Hills.= BY GILDER CLAY.
Cloth decorative, illustrated $1.50
"Hester of the Hills" has a motif unusual in life, and new in fiction.
Its hero, who has only acquired his own strength and resourcefulness by
a lifelong struggle against constitutional frailty, has come to make the
question of bodily soundness his dominant thought. He resolves to ensure
strong constitutions to his children by marrying a physically perfect
woman. After long search, he finds this ideal in Hester, the daughter of
a "cracker squatter," of the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. But,--he
forgot to take into consideration that very vital emotion, love, which
played havoc with his well-laid plans.
It is an ingenious combination of practical realism and imaginative
fiction worked out to a thoroughly delightful and satisfying climax.
=Prisoners of Fortune.= A TALE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS
BAY COLONY. BY RUEL PERLEY SMITH, author of "The Rival
Campers," etc.
Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece by Frank T. Merrill $1.50
The period of Mr. Smith's story is the beginning of the eighteenth
century, when the shores of the American colonies were harassed and the
seas patrolled by pirates and buccaneers. These robbed and spoiled, and
often seized and put to death, the sailors and fishers and other humbler
folk, while their leaders claimed friendship alike with Southern
planters and New England merchants,--with whom it is said they
frequently divided their spoils.
The times were stern and the colonists were hardy, but they loved as
truly and tenderly as in more peaceful days. Thus, while the hero's
adventures with pirates and his search for their hidden treasure is a
record of desperate encounters and daring deeds, his love-story and his
winning of sweet Mary Vane is in delightful contrast.
=The Rome Express.= BY MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS, author
of "The Passenger from Calais," etc.
Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece by A. O. Scott $1.25
A mysterious murder on a flying express train, a wily Italian, a
charming woman caught in the meshes of circumstantial evidence, a
chivalrous Englishman, and a police force with a keen nose for the wrong
clue, are the ingredients from which Major Griffiths has concocted a
clever, up-to-date detective story. The book is bright and spirited,
with rapid action, and consistent development which brings the story to
a logical and dramatic ending.
=The Morning Glory Club.= BY GEORGE A. KYLE.
Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece by A. O. Scott. $1.25
The doings of the Morning Glory Club will furnish genuine amusement to
the reader. Originally formed to "elevate" the village, it quickly
develops into an exchange for town gossip. It has a saving grace,
however, in the person of motherly Mrs. Stout, the uncultured but
sweet-natured and pure-minded village philosopher, who pours the oil of
her saneness and charity on the troubled waters of discussion and
condemnation.
It is a series of clear and interesting pictures of the humor of village
life.
=The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Detective.= NEW
ILLUSTRATED EDITION. BY ARTHUR MORRISON, author of
"The Green Diamond," "The Red Triangle," etc.
Cloth decorative, with six full-page drawings by W. Kirkpatrick $1.50
The success of Mr. Morrison's recent books, "The Green Diamond" and "The
Red Triangle," has led to an imperative demand for the reissue of "The
Chronicles of Martin Hewitt," which has been out of print for a number
of years.
It will be remembered that Martin Hewitt is the detective in "The Red
Triangle," of whom the _New York Tribune_ said: "Better than Sherlock
Holmes." His adventures in the London slums were of such a nature that
the _Philadelphia North American_ said: "The reader who has a grain of
fancy or imagination may be defied to lay this book down once he has
begun it until the last word is reached."
=Mystery Island.= BY EDWARD H. HURST.
Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece $1.50
A hunting camp on a swampy island in the Florida Everglades furnishes
the background for this present-day tale.
By the murder of one of their number, the secret of egress from the
island is lost, and the campers find themselves marooned.
Cut off from civilization, conventional veneer soon wears away. Love,
hate, and revenge spring up, and after the sterner passions have had
their sway the man and the woman are left alone to fulfil their own
destiny.
While there is much that is unusual in the plot and its development, Mr.
Hurst has handled his subject with fine delicacy, and the tale of their
love on the beautiful little island is told with deep sympathy and
feeling.
=The Flying Cloud.= BY MORLEY ROBERTS, author of "The
Promotion of the Admiral," "Rachel Marr," "The
Idlers," etc.
Cloth decorative, with a colored frontispiece $1.50
Mr. Roberts's new book is much more than a ripping good sea story such
as might be expected from the author of "The Promotion of the Admiral."
In "The Flying Cloud" the waters and the winds are gods personified.
Their every mood and phase are described in words of telling force.
There is no world but the waste of waters.
Mr. Roberts glories and exults in the mystery, the passion, the
strength of the elements, as did the Viking chroniclers of old. He
understands them and loves them and interprets them as no other writer
has heretofore done. The book is too big for conventional phrases. It
needs Mr. Roberts's own richness of imagery and masterly expression to
describe adequately the word-pictures in this epic of wind and waves.
Selections from L. C. Page and Company's List of Fiction
WORKS OF ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS
_Each one vol., library 12mo, cloth decorative_ $1.50
=The Flight of Georgiana=
A ROMANCE OF THE DAYS OF THE YOUNG PRETENDER. Illustrated by H. C.
Edwards.
"A love-story in the highest degree, a dashing story, and a remarkably
well finished piece of work."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
=The Bright Face of Danger=
Being an account of some adventures of Henri de Launay, son of the Sieur
de la Tournoire. Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.
"Mr. Stephens has fairly outdone himself. We thank him heartily. The
story is nothing if not spirited and entertaining, rational and
convincing."--_Boston Transcript._
=The Mystery of Murray Davenport=
(40th thousand.)
"This is easily the best thing that Mr. Stephens has yet done. Those
familiar with his other novels can best judge the measure of this
praise, which is generous."--_Buffalo News._
=Captain Ravenshaw=
OR, THE MAID OF CHEAPSIDE. (52d thousand.) A romance of Elizabethan
London. Illustrations by Howard Pyle and other artists.
Not since the absorbing adventures of D'Artagnan have we had anything so
good in the blended vein of romance and comedy.
=The Continental Dragoon=
A ROMANCE OF PHILIPSE MANOR HOUSE IN 1778. (53d thousand.) Illustrated
by H. C. Edwards.
A stirring romance of the Revolution, with its scene laid on neutral
territory.
=Philip Winwood=
(70th thousand.) A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain
in the War of Independence, embracing events that occurred between and
during the years 1763 and 1785 in New York and London. Illustrated by E.
W. D. Hamilton.
=An Enemy to the King=
(70th thousand.) From the "Recently Discovered Memoirs of the Sieur de
la Tournoire." Illustrated by H. De M. Young.
An historical romance of the sixteenth century, describing the
adventures of a young French nobleman at the court of Henry III., and on
the field with Henry IV.
=The Road to Paris=
A STORY OF ADVENTURE. (35th thousand.) Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.
An historical romance of the eighteenth century, being an account of the
life of an American gentleman adventurer of Jacobite ancestry.
=A Gentleman Player=
HIS ADVENTURES ON A SECRET MISSION FOR QUEEN ELIZABETH. (48th thousand.)
Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill.
The story of a young gentleman who joins Shakespeare's company of
players, and becomes a friend and protege of the great poet.
WORKS OF CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
=Red Fox=
THE STORY OF HIS ADVENTUROUS CAREER IN THE RINGWAAK WILDS, AND OF HIS
FINAL TRIUMPH OVER THE ENEMIES OF HIS KIND. With fifty illustrations,
including frontispiece in color and cover design by Charles Livingston
Bull.
Square quarto, cloth decorative $2.00
"Infinitely more wholesome reading than the average
tale of sport, since it gives a glimpse of the hunt
from the point of view of the hunted."--_Boston
Transcript._
"True in substance but fascinating as fiction. It will
interest old and young, city-bound and free-footed,
those who know animals and those who do
not."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
"A brilliant chapter in natural
history."--_Philadelphia North American._
=The Kindred of the Wild=
A BOOK OF ANIMAL LIFE. With fifty-one full-page plates and many
decorations from drawings by Charles Livingston Bull.
Square quarto, decorative cover $2.00
"Is in many ways the most brilliant collection of
animal stories that has appeared; well named and well
done."--_John Burroughs._
=The Watchers of the Trails=
A companion volume to "The Kindred of the Wild." With forty-eight
full-page plates and many decorations from drawings by Charles
Livingston Bull.
Square quarto, decorative cover $2.00
"Mr. Roberts has written a most interesting series of
tales free from the vices of the stories regarding
animals of many other writers, accurate in their facts
and admirably and dramatically told."--_Chicago News._
"These stories are exquisite in their refinement, and
yet robust in their appreciation of some of the
rougher phases of woodcraft. Among the many writers
about animals, Mr. Roberts occupies an enviable
place."--_The Outlook._
"This is a book full of delight. An additional charm
lies in Mr. Bull's faithful and graphic illustrations,
which in fashion all their own tell the story of the
wild life, illuminating and supplementing the pen
pictures of the author."--_Literary Digest._
=Earth's Enigmas=
A new edition of Mr. Roberts's first volume of fiction, published in
1892, and out of print for several years, with the addition of three new
stories, and ten illustrations by Charles Livingston Bull.
Library 12mo, cloth, decorative cover $1.50
"It will rank high among collections of short stories.
In 'Earth's Enigmas' is a wider range of subject than
in the 'Kindred of the Wild.'"--_Review from advance
sheets of the illustrated edition by Tiffany Blake in
the Chicago Evening Post._
=Barbara Ladd=
With four illustrations by Frank Verbeck.
Library 12mo, gilt top $1.50
"From the opening chapter to the final page Mr.
Roberts lures us on by his rapt devotion to the
changing aspects of Nature and by his keen and
sympathetic analysis of human character"--_Boston
Transcript._
=Cameron of Lochiel=
Translated from the French of Philippe Aubert de Gaspe, with
frontispiece in color by H. C. Edwards.
Library 12mo, cloth decorative $1.50
"Professor Roberts deserves the thanks of his reader
for giving a wider audience an opportunity to enjoy
this striking bit of French Canadian
literature."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
"It is not often in these days of sensational and
philosophical novels that one picks up a book that so
touches the heart."--_Boston Transcript._
=The Prisoner of Mademoiselle=
With frontispiece by Frank T. Merrill.
Library 12mo, cloth decorative, gilt top $1.50
A tale of Acadia,--a land which is the author's heart's delight,--of a
valiant young lieutenant and a winsome maiden, who first captures and
then captivates.
"This is the kind of a story that makes one grow
younger, more innocent, more light-hearted. Its
literary quality is impeccable. It is not every day
that such a heroine blossoms into even temporary
existence, and the very name of the story bears a
breath of charm."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
=The Heart of the Ancient Wood=
With six illustrations by James L. Weston.
Library 12mo, decorative cover $1.50
"One of the most fascinating novels of recent
days."--_Boston Journal._
"A classic twentieth-century romance."--_New York
Commercial Advertiser._
=The Forge In the Forest=
Being the Narrative of the Acadian Ranger, Jean de Mer, Seigneur de
Briart, and how he crossed the Black Abbe, and of his adventures in a
strange fellowship. Illustrated by Henry Sandham, R. C. A.
Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top $1.50
A story of pure love and heroic adventure.
=By the Marshes of Minas=
Library 12mo, cloth, gilt top, illustrated $1.50
Most of these romances are in the author's lighter and more playful
vein; each is a unit of absorbing interest and exquisite workmanship.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page 80, "threatenin" changed to "threatening" (and a threatening swing)
Page 177, "fastidous" changed to "fastidious" (is fastidious, and only)