CHAPTER I: THE REACHING OF A DECISION For the second time that night Frederick Cavendish, sitting at a small table in a busy café where the night life of the city streamed continually in and out, regarded the telegram spread out upon the white napery. It read: Bear Creek, Colorado, 4/2/15. FREDERICK CAVENDISH,  College Club,    New York City. Found big lead; lost it again. Need you badly.... more...

CHAPTER I My Boyhood Reading Early Recollections To get the best out of books, I am convinced that you must begin to love these perennial friends very early in life. It is the only way to know all their "curves," all those little shadows of expression and small lights. There is a glamour which you never see if you begin to read with a serious intention late in life, when questions of technique... more...

THE CITY OF NEW YORK. The City of New York is the largest and most important in America. Its corporate limits embrace the whole of Manhattan Island, on which it is situated, and which is bounded by the Hudson, the East and Harlem rivers, and by Spuyten Duyvil creek, which last connects the Harlem with the Hudson. Being almost entirely surrounded by deep water, and lying within sight of the ocean, and... more...

THE GRUB-STAKER I "There's gold in the Sierra Blanca country—everybody admits it," Sherman F. Bidwell was saying as the Widow Delaney, who kept the Palace Home Cooking Restaurant in the town of Delaney (named after her husband, old Dan Delaney), came into the dining-room. Mrs. Delaney paused with a plate of steaming potatoes, and her face was a mask of scorn as she addressed the group,... more...

CHAPTER I The Unlucky Day of the Fool's Month—High Street, WestBromwich—My First Pedestrian Triumph—The Common EnglishBracken—The Sense of Beauty. I remember that in a fit of petulance at some childish misdemeanour, my mother once told me that I came into the world on the unlucky day of the fool's month. It was her picturesque way of saying that I was born on the thirteenth of April.... more...

Love Instigated. It was a daisy bit of Ivory. It was a curious piece of Workmanship. It was carved and carved again with Conventional Lines, which formed a Female Head of East-Indian Unexceptionableness. It seemed to Smile and to Beckon, and then to Scowl repellantly—a Living Mockery! It was Hateful—Oh, so Hateful!—the sight Of so conventional a Thing. And yet there had been such a Longing to... more...

CHAPTER I SALLY CREIGHTON The frost outside was bitter, and the prairie which rolled back from Lander’s in long undulations to the far horizon, gleamed white beneath the moon, but there was warmth and brightness in Stukely’s wooden barn. The barn stood at one end of the little, desolate settlement, where the trail that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two wavy ribands... more...

CHAPTER I. I was born in Lexington, Ky. The man who stole me as soon as I was born, recorded the births of all the infants which he claimed to be born his property, in a book which he kept for that purpose. My mother's name was Elizabeth. She had seven children, viz: Solomon, Leander, Benjamin, Joseph, Millford, Elizabeth, and myself. No two of us were children of the same father. My father's... more...

In Search of the “Barbara.” “What’s the name of the craft you want to get aboard, sir?” asked old Bob, the one-legged boatman, whose wherry I had hired to carry me out to Spithead. “The Barbara,” I answered, trying to look more at my ease than I felt; for the old fellow, besides having but one leg, had a black patch over the place where his right eye should have been, while his left arm... more...

CHAPTER I FRONTIER DAY Lefever, if there was a table in the room, could never be got to sit on a chair; and being rotund he sat preferably sidewise on the edge of the table. One of his small feet––his feet were encased in tight, high-heeled, ill-fitting horsemen’s boots––usually rested on the floor, the other swung at the end of his stubby leg slowly in the air. This idiosyncrasy his... more...