what we should find there. A peaceful smoke rose from the kitchen
chimney into the quiet air. Through the window I saw--yes, it was
May!--most domestically preparing food. Outside by the pond a figure
stood. It was Jimsy. He was feeding the ducks. I swung off my horse and
hurried to Jimsy. Sir Francis was eating from his hand.
“How!” said he in cheerful greeting.
“How!” I returned.
“Get an elk?”
“Yes.”
“Sheep?”
“Yes.”
“Good!”
“You--you’re--you’re feeding the ducks.”
“Sure thing!--Say, I’ve found out his game.”
I pointed to Sir Francis. “His control, you mean?--how he keeps his
hold?”
“Sure thing!” Jimsy pointed to the ducks. “Has ’em competin’ for him.
Keeps ’em a-guessing. That’s his game.”
It stunned me for a second. Of course he didn’t know that the valley had
talked to me.
“Why, how do you do?” cried May, cheerfully, coming out of the house.
Then I took it all in and I broke into scandalous, irredeemable
laughter.
A bright flash came into Jimsy’s eyes as _he_ took it all in--then he
also gave way, but he blushed heavily.
“Whatever are you two laughing at?” exclaimed May. She looked radiant.
That clear note was all melted from her voice. “Mr. Le Moyne, aren’t you
going to stay to dinner?”
“Why, thank you!” said Scipio--polite, and embarrassed almost to
stuttering.
To Sir Francis Jimsy gave the last piece of toast. It was a large one.
If the drake was aware of the tie between Jimsy’s marital methods and
his own, he betrayed it as little as he betrayed knowledge of all things
which it is best never to notice.
Yes, I am grateful to the game laws. The next legislature made them
intelligible.
* * * * *
The following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan
novels.
* * * * *
Mr. OWEN WISTER
The Virginian
A Horseman of the Plains
WITH EIGHT FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
BY ARTHUR I. KELLER
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.50_
“There is not a page in Mr. Wister’s new book which is not interesting.
This is its first great merit, that it arouses the sympathy of the
reader and holds him absorbed and amused to the end. It does a great
deal more for him. ‘Whoever reads the first page will find it next to
impossible to put the book down until he has read every one of the five
hundred and four in the book, and then he will wish there were more of
them.’”--_New York Tribune._
“Mr. Wister has drawn real men and real women.... In ‘The Virginian’ he
has put forth a book that will be remembered and read with interest many
years hence.”--_Chicago American._
“The story is human and alive. It has the ‘touch and go’ of the
vibrating life of the expansive American West and puts the country and
the people vividly before the reader.”--_Philadelphia Times-Saturday
Review._
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
* * * * *
By OWEN WISTER
Lady Baltimore
_Illustrated, cloth, 12mo, $1.50_
“It is pleasant to be able to say that ... his reputation will be more
than merely maintained by his new venture.... It would be difficult to
speak too highly of this delightful volume.... ‘Lady Baltimore,’ as may
be gathered from what we have said above, is a many-sided book.... In
fine, here is an author of whom America may well be proud, not only for
his literary accomplishments, but for his generous, yet discriminating,
love of his country.”--_The Spectator_, London.
“Full of the tenderest human interest, sufficiently dramatic, with a
decided touch of originality.”--_Daily News_, Chicago.
“A delightful story; the reader is captivated from the start.”--_New
York Globe._
“As a picture it is charming; as a story it has genuine strength.”--_New
York Mail._
“Wholly charming from end to end.”--_Toronto Globe._
“The story maintains a rare quality of sincerity and indefinable
charm.”--_North American_, Philadelphia.
“A most charming story ... one of the most exquisite done in
years.”--_Citizen_, Brooklyn.
“A love story that even excels that between Molly Wood and ‘The
Virginian.’”--_The Advance_, Chicago.
“We have been wholly charmed with ‘Lady Baltimore,’ and wish sincerely
that it was our luck to read books like it every day.”--_Richmond
Times-Dispatch._
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
* * * * *
By OWEN WISTER
The Seven Ages of Washington
_Cloth, gilt top, 12mo, $2.00 net; by mail, $2.16_
CRITICAL COMMENDATION
“It is a curious fact that the life of Washington has never been really
easy to write.... But in these matters the character of the historian
means everything. If we have the right man we may be sure of a good
book. As regards the true Washington we have in Mr. Wister the right
man.
“‘The Seven Ages of Washington’ ... gives a remarkable interpretation of
its subject.... It is plain that the author has been moved to the depths
of him by his hero’s worth, finding in the traditionally ‘cold’ figure
of Washington a type to touch the emotions as vividly as Napoleon
touches them in even his most dramatic moments. He passes on his
impression in a few chapters which gather up everyday traits as they
come out in letters and other records. The salient events in
Washington’s career, military and political, are indicated rather than
dwelt upon. The object of interest is always his character; the things
placed in the foreground are the episodes, great or small, which show us
that character in action or point to the sources of its development....
“The background is handled with perfect discretion. The reader who is
searching for an authoritative biography of Washington, brief, and made
humanly interesting from the first page to the last, will find it
here.”--From a column review of the book in _The New York Tribune_, Nov.
23, 1907.
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
* * * * *
By OWEN WISTER
How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee
_Illustrated, decorated cloth, 16mo, $0.50_
“Mr. Wister’s humor is always genuine and racy, and in this little
burlesque he fairly riots in absurd specimens of supersimplified
spelling. This fantastic skit is intensely amusing.”--_Outlook._
“It is a clever extravaganza, and points a moral without possibility of
mistake.”--_Louisville Post._
“Its spirit is the spirit of pure farce, and the vein of satire that
runs through it only adds to the hilarity of the tale.”--_Critic._
Philosophy Four
_Illustrated, decorated cloth, 16mo, $0.50_
“Told well and with a reserve which betokens a ripe literary
craft.”--_Daily Chronicle._
“Owen Wister is a born story-teller. If you have ever read any of his
books you have doubtless discovered this for yourself. In this charming
story of undergraduate life at Harvard, Mr. Wister has shown that he has
great skill in character delineation.”--_The Boston Globe._
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
* * * * *
_NEW MACMILLAN NOVELS OF UNUSUAL INTEREST_
MRS. ROGER A. PRYOR’S New Novel
The Colonel’s Story
_Cloth, $1.20 net; by mail, $1.32_
For those who have a tenderness for the old days of the South, or who
know the charm of Mrs. Pryor’s books of personal experience therein--“My
Day” and “Reminiscences of Peace and War”--this book has an unusual
charm.
F. MARION CRAWFORD’S
Wandering Ghosts
_Cloth, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35_
It is uncommonly interesting that the last volume to be added to the
long shelf of Mr. Crawford’s novels should be this in which he makes the
supernatural so vividly felt.
GUSTAV FRENSSEN’S
Klaus Hinrich Baas
_Cloth, $1.50_
“One of those rare novels that is so veracious, so packed with the
veritable stuff of life, that it is a genuine human document--true, but
also universal.”--_Louisville Evening Post._
“A big, strong, life-size portrait of a real man.”--_Chicago
Record-Herald._
JACK LONDON’S
Adventure
_Cloth, $1.50_
“There’s a real story to ‘Adventure,’ and a quite unusually good love
interest.”--_Chicago Inter Ocean._
“A rapidly shifting panorama of exciting incident.”--_Boston
Transcript._
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lately changed to Shoshone River by act of legislature. While we
miss the old name, derived from certain sulphur springs, we agree that
like the Indian and the cow-boy it belongs to the past.
[2] For reasons, those who in 188--named this place after its chief
inhabitant, wished to disguise his name. This they accomplished by
changing the order of the letters which spelled it.
[3] To-day the flourishing resort Thermopolis, connected with both
north and south by an important line of railway. In those days this
lonely spot must have been two hundred miles from any railway.