see it was a copy of the _Banner_ with that awful story of his
staring out at him from the first page, headed and played up with all
the brutal skill in handling type of which Naylor was a master; but he
felt himself drawn irresistibly to the Grand Central Station, where the
Boston papers would first be put on sale.
Half an hour to wait. Gad! He could never go back and face Naylor!...
Libel! Why, there wasn't money enough in the world to pay the damages
the Athelstones would get against the paper. He'd take just one look at
it and then catch the first train for Chicago. Perhaps he could get a
job there digging sewers, or selling ribbons in Fields', or start a
school of journalism. Any old thing, if they didn't nab him and put him
in Bloomingdale before he could get away.... He made for the street
again. He wouldn't look at the _Banner_. What malignant little
devils the types were when they shouted your sins, not another fellow's,
from the front page, or whispered them in a stage aside from some little
paragraph in an obscure corner of the paper--a corner that the whole
world looked into. Hell, he'd get out of the filthy business! Think of
the light and frolicsome way in which he'd written up domestic scandals,
the entertaining specials he'd turned out on unfaithful husbands, the
snappy columns on unhappy wives, careless of the cost of his sensation
in blood and tears! And now they'd write him up--Naylor would attend to
that editorial himself, and do it in his most virtuous style--and brand
him as a fakir, a liar, and a yellow dog.
Simpkins was back at the news-stand again and there were the Boston
papers. He snatched a _Banner_ from the top of the pile. No, he
must have the wrong paper. He tore through it from front to back and
then to front again, his heart bounding with joy. There was not a line
of his story in it. They had received that Associated Press dispatch,
after all. Yes, there it was, but oh, how differently it looked! It
spelt damnation an hour ago, it meant salvation now.
* * * * *
After all, hadn't his mistake been a natural one? Hadn't he done his
best for the paper? Wasn't it his duty to run down a lead like that?
He'd made errors of judgment, perhaps, but he'd like to see the man who
wouldn't have under the circumstances. Of course, mistakes would creep
in occasionally and give innocent people the worst of it, but look at
the good he'd done in his life by exposing scoundrels. How could he, how
could any man, have acted differently who was loyal to his paper, whose
first interests were the public good? If Naylor didn't appreciate a star
man when he had him, he thought he knew an editor or two who did. Simp.,
old boy, wasn't going to starve.... Starve? It had been hungry work, so
he'd just step across to the Manhattan, get a bite of breakfast, and
look up the trains to Boston.
Naylor did know a good man when he had him, and likewise--quite as
valuable a bit of knowledge--he knew when a man had had enough. So when
Simpkins sat down that afternoon to tell him his experiences, he only
smiled quizzically as the reporter wound up by asking, "Now, what do
_you_ think?" and answered:
"Well, for one thing, I think it did you a power of good to look behind
that veil, because I reckon that for once in your life you've told me
the truth as near as you know how."
"No, but aside from this pleasant personal conclusion," persisted
Simpkins, modestly shedding the compliment.
"Well, I guess we won't bother with the Blavatsky story just now, but
here's a clipping about a woman who's discovered what she calls soul
aura--says we've got red, white and blue souls and all that sort of
stuff. You're our soul expert now, so go over to the City Hall and ask
the mayor and any politicians you meet what's the color of their souls.
It ought to make a fair Sunday special." And Naylor swung around to his
desk, for the city editor had just told him that the headless trunk of a
woman had been picked up in the river--a find that promised a good
story--and a newspaper man cannot waste time on yesterday.
Simpkins' face fell. That he had not been assigned to find the head was,
he knew, the beginning of his punishment. But as he walked down the
dingy hall to the street his step became more buoyant, and once in the
open air he started off eager and smiling. For a good opening sentence
was already shaping in his head, and as he stepped into the City Hall he
was repeating to himself:
"Yesterday, when the Mayor was asked, 'What is the color of your soul?'
he returned his stereotyped 'Nothing to give out on that subject,' and
then added, 'But it would be violating no confidence to tell you that
Boss Coonahan's is black.'"
To Simpkins it had been given to lift the veil and to know the truth;
yet he was back again serving the false gods.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
WHERE LOVE CONQUERS.
The Reckoning.
By Robert W. Chambers.
The author's intention is to treat, in a series of four or five
romances, that part of the war for independence which particularly
affected the great landed families of northern New York, the Johnsons,
represented by Sir William, Sir John, Guy Johnson, and Colonel Claus;
the notorious Butlers, father and son, the Schuylers, Van Rensselaers,
and others.
The first romance of the series, Cardigan, was followed by the second,
The Maid-at-Arms. The third, in order, is not completed. The fourth is
the present volume.
As Cardigan pretended to portray life on the baronial estate of Sir
William Johnson, the first uneasiness concerning the coming trouble, the
first discordant note struck in the harmonious councils of the Long
House, so, in The Maid-at-Arms, which followed in order, the author
attempted to paint a patroon family disturbed by the approaching rumble
of battle. That romance dealt with the first serious split in the
Iroquois Confederacy; it showed the Long House shattered though not
fallen; the demoralization and final flight of the great landed families
who remained loyal to the British Crown; and it struck the key-note to
the future attitude of the Iroquois toward the patriots of the
frontier--revenge for their losses at the battle of Oriskany--and ended
with the march of the militia and continental troops on Saratoga.
The third romance, as yet incomplete and unpublished, deals with the
war-path and those who followed it led by the landed gentry of Tryon
County; and ends with the first solid blow delivered at the Long House,
and the terrible punishment of the Great Confederacy.
The present romance, the fourth in chronological order, picks up the
thread at that point.
The author is not conscious of having taken any liberties with history
in preparing a framework of facts for a mantle of romance.
Robert W. Chambers.
NEW YORK, _May 26, 1904_.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
WORKS OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.
IOLE
Colored inlay on the cover, decorative borders, head-pieces, thumb-nail
sketches, and tail-pieces. Frontispiece and three full-page
illustrations. 12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.25.
Does anybody remember the opera of The Inca, and that heart-breaking
episode where the Court Undertaker, in a morbid desire to increase his
professional skill, deliberately accomplishes the destruction of his
middle-aged relatives in order to inter them for the sake of practice?
If I recollect, his dismal confession runs something like this:
"It was in bleak November
When I slew them, I remember,
As I caught them unawares
Drinking tea in rocking-chairs."
And so he talked them to death, the subject being "What Really Is Art?"
Afterward he was sorry--
"The squeak of a door,
The creak of a floor,
My horrors and fears enhance;
And I wake with a scream
As I hear in my dream
The shrieks of my maiden aunts!"
Now it is a very dreadful thing to suggest that those highly respectable
pseudo-spinsters, the Sister Arts, supposedly cozily immune in their
polygamous chastity (for every suitor for favor is popularly expected to
be wedded to his particular art)--I repeat, it is very dreadful to
suggest that these impeccable old ladies are in danger of being talked
to death.
But the talkers are talking and Art Nouveau rockers are rocking, and the
trousers of the prophet are patched with stained glass, and it is a day
of dinkiness and of thumbs.
Let us find comfort in the ancient proverb: "Art talked to death shall
rise again." Let us also recollect that "Dinky is as dinky does;" that
"All is not Shaw that Bernards;" that "Better Yeates than Clever;" that
words are so inexpensive that there is no moral crime in robbing Henry
to pay James.
Firmly believing all this, abjuring all atom-pickers, slab furniture,
and woodchuck literature--save only the immortal verse:
"And there the wooden-chuck doth tread;
While from the oak trees' tops
The red, red squirrel on the head
The frequent acorn drops."
Abjuring, as I say, dinkiness in all its forms, we may still hope that
those cleanly and respectable spinsters, the Sister Arts, will continue
throughout the ages, rocking and drinking tea unterrified by the
million-tongued clamor in the back yard and below stairs, where thumb
and forefinger continue the question demanded by intellectual
exhaustion:
"L'arr! Kesker say l'arr?"
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
THE MASTERPIECE OF A MASTER MIND.
The Prodigal Son.
By Hall Caine. 12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.
"The Prodigal Son" follows the lines of the Bible parable in the
principal incidents, but in certain important particulars it departs
from them. In a most convincing way, and with rare beauty, the story
shows that Christ's parable is a picture of heavenly mercy, and not of
human justice, and if it were used as an example of conduct among men it
would destroy all social conditions and disturb accepted laws of
justice. The book is full of movement and incident, and must appeal to
the public by its dramatic story alone. The Prodigal Son at the close of
the book has learned this great lesson, and the meaning of the parable
is revealed to him. Neither success nor fame can ever wipe out the evil
of the past. It is not from the unalterable laws of nature and life that
forgiveness can be hoped for.
"Since 'The Manxman' Hall Caine has written nothing so moving in its
elements of pathos and tragedy, so plainly marked with the power to
search the human heart and reveal its secret springs of strength and
weakness, its passion and strife, so sincere and satisfying as 'The
Prodigal Son.'"--_New York Times_.
"It is done with supreme self-confidence, and the result is a work of
genius."--_New York Evening Post_.
"'The Prodigal Son' will hold the reader's attention from cover to
cover."--_Philadelphia Record_.
"This is one of Hall Caine's best novels--one that a large portion of
the fiction-reading public will thoroughly enjoy."--_Chicago
Record-Herald_.
"It is a notable piece of fiction."--_Philadelphia Inquirer_.
"In 'The Prodigal Son' Hall Caine has produced his greatest
work.'--_Boston Herald_.
"Mr. Caine has achieved a work of extraordinary merit, a fiction as
finely conceived, as deftly constructed, as some of the best work of our
living novelists."--_London Daily Mail_.
"'The Prodigal Son' is indeed a notable novel; and a work that may
certainly rank with the best of recent fiction...."--_Westminster
Gazette_.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
"A beautiful romance of the days of Robert Burns."
Nancy Stair.
A Novel. By Elinor Macartney Lane, author of "Mills of God."
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
"With very much the grace and charm of Robert Louis Stevenson, the
author of 'The Life of Nancy Stair' combines unusual gifts of narrative,
characterization, color, and humor. She has also delicacy, dramatic
quality, and that rare gift--historic imagination.
"'The Life of Nancy Stair' is interesting from the first sentence to the
last; the characters are vital and are, also, most entertaining company;
the denouement unexpected and picturesque and cleverly led up to from
one of the earliest chapters; the story moves swiftly and without a
hitch. Robert Burns is neither idealized nor caricatured; Sandy, Jock,
Pitcairn, Danvers Carmichael, and the Duke of Borthewicke are admirably
relieved against each other, and Nancy herself as irresistible as she is
natural. To be sure, she is a wonderful child, but then she manages to
make you believe she was a real one. Indeed, reality and naturalness are
two of the charms of a story that both reaches the heart and engages the
mind, and which can scarcely fail to make for itself a large audience. A
great deal of delightful talk and interesting incidents are used for the
development of the story. Whoever reads it will advise everybody he
knows to read it; and those who do not care for its literary quality
cannot escape the interest of a love-story full of incident and
atmosphere."
"Powerfully and attractively written."--_Pittsburg Post_.
"A story best described with the word 'charming.'"--_Washington Post_.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
WIT, SPARKLING, SCINTILLATING WIT, IS THE ESSENCE OF
Kate of Kate Hall,
By Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, whose reputation was made by her first
book, "Concerning Isabel Carnaby," and enhanced by her last success,
"Place and Power."
"In 'Kate of Kate Hall,' by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, the question of
imminent concern is the marriage of super-dainty, peppery-tempered Lady
Katherine Clare, whose wealthy godmother, erstwhile deceased, has left
her a vast fortune, on condition that she shall be wedded within six
calendar months from date of the testator's death.
"An easy matter, it would seem, for bonny Kate, notwithstanding her
aptness at sharp repartee, is a morsel fit for the gods.
"The accepted suitor appears in due time; but comes to grief at the last
moment in a quarrel with Lady Kate over a kiss bestowed by her upon her
godmother's former man of affairs and secretary. This incident she
haughtily refuses to explain. Moreover, she shatters the bond of
engagement, although but three weeks remain of the fatal six months. She
would rather break stones on the road all day and sleep in a pauper's
grave all night, than marry a man who, while professing to love her,
would listen to mean and malicious gossips picked up by tell-tales in
the servants' hall.
"So the great estate is likely to be lost to Kate and her debt-ridden
father, Lord Claverley. How it is conserved at last, and gloomy
apprehension chased away by dazzling visions of material splendor--that
is the author's well-kept secret, not to be shared here with a careless
and indolent public."--_Philadelphia North American._
"The long-standing reproach that women are seldom humorists seems in a
fair way of passing out of existence. Several contemporary feminine
writers have at least sufficient sense of humor to produce characters as
deliciously humorous as delightful. Of such order is the Countess
Claverley, made whimsically real and lovable in the recent book by Ellen
Thorneycroft Fowler and A.L. Felkin, 'Kate of Kate Hall.'"--_Chicago
Record-Herald._
"'Kate of Kate Hall' is a novel in which Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
displays her brilliant abilities at their best. The story is well
constructed, the plot develops beautifully, the incidents are varied and
brisk, and the dialogue is deliciously clever."--_Rochester Democrat
and Chronicle._
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
LOVE. MYSTERY. VENICE.
The Clock and the Key.
By Arthur Henry Vesey. 12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.
This is a tale of a mystery connected with an old clock. The lover, an
American man of means, is startled out of his sensuous, inactive life in
Venice by his lady-love's scorn for his indolence. She begs of him to
perform any task that will prove his persistence and worth. With the
charm of Venice as a background, one follows the adventures of the lover
endeavoring to read the puzzling hints of the old clock as to the
whereabouts of the famous jewels of many centuries ago. After following
many false clues the lover ultimately solves the mystery, triumphs over
his rivals, and wins the girl.
AMERICA.
"For an absorbing story it would be hard to beat."--_Harper's
Weekly._
ENGLAND.
"It will hold the reader till the last page."--_London Times._
SCOTLAND.
"It would hardly suffer by comparison with Poe's immortal 'Gold
Bug.'"_--Glasgow Herald._
* * * * *
NORTH.
"It ought to make a record."--_Montreal Sun._
SOUTH.
"It is as fascinating in its way as the Sherlock Holmes
stories--charming--unique."--_New Orleans Picayune._
EAST.
"Don't fail to get it."--_New York Sun._
WEST.
"About the most ingeniously constructed bit of sensational fiction that
ever made the weary hours speed."--_St. Paul Pioneer Press._
* * * * *
"If you want a thrilling story of intrigue and mystery, which will cause
you to burn the midnight oil until the last page is finished, read 'The
Clock and the Key.'"--_Milwaukee Wisconsin._
"One of the most highly exciting and ingenious stories we have read for
a long time is 'The Clock and the Key.'"--_London Mail._
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
A GOOD AUTOMOBILE STORY.
Baby Bullet.
By Lloyd Osbourne, Author of "The Motor-maniacs." Illustrated.
12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.
This is the jolliest, most delightfully humorous love story that has
been written in the last ten years. Baby Bullet is an "orphan
automobile." It is all through the adoption of Baby Bullet by her
travelling companion that a dear, sweet, human modern girl meets a very
nice young man, and a double romance is begun and finished on an
automobiling tour through England.
"The story is smoothly written, full of action and healthful
fun."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._
"'Baby Bullet' is without doubt the best written and most entertaining
automobile story yet published. The most enjoyable feature of this book
is its genuine, unforced humor, which finds expression not only in
ludicrous situations, but in bright and spirited dialogue, keen
observation and natural characterization.'--_St. Paul Dispatch._
"Certain stories there are that a man fervently wishes he might claim as
his own. Of these, 'Baby Bullet' is one."--_Baltimore Sun._
"It is broad comedy, full of adventurous fun, clever and effective. The
tale is fascinating from the start. The adventures of Baby Bullet are
distinctly funny."--_New York Sun._
"The characters are lightly drawn, but with great humor. It is a story
that refreshes a tired brain and provokes a light heart."--_Chicago
Tribune._
"It is a most satisfying and humorous narrative."--_Indianapolis
News._
"One of the funniest scenes in recent fiction is the escape of the
automobile party from the peroxide blonde who has answered their
advertisement for a chaperon."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
* * * * *
A SPLENDID NEWSPAPER YARN.
A Yellow Journalist.
By Miriam Michelson, Author of "In the Bishop's Carriage," etc.
Illustrated. 12mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50.
This novel has the true newspaper thrill in it from beginning to end.
The intense desire to "cover" one's assignment completely and well is
brought out in the midst of the melodramatic atmosphere in which a
modern newspaper woman must live. The stories are all true to life, and
mixed with the excitement there is a wealth of humor and pathos.
"There is a dash about 'A Yellow Journalist' that exhilarates like a
fresh breeze on a sharp winter morning."--_Chicago Record-Herald_.
"The book is bright and entertaining."--_Minneapolis Tribune_.
"There are just a few writers who have succeeded in reducing to paper
the atmosphere of a newspaper office, and since the appearance of 'A
Yellow Journalist,' Miriam Michelson must be numbered among
them."--_The Bookman_.
"Miss Michelson's work has found great favor. The stories contained in
this book are characteristic."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger_.
"Only one with the genuine journalistic instinct, who has agonized over
a story and known the ecstacy of a 'beat' and the anguish of being beat,
can write of news-gathering as Miss Michelson does. But she has other
good qualities in addition to these--a good dramatic instinct, a piquant
humor, and a knowledge of human nature. The fourteen chapters of 'A
Yellow Journalist' are mighty interesting reading."--_Baltimore
News_.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.