Fiction

A CLOUDY day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky sank down before
dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy with the breath of crowded human
beings. It stifles me. I open the window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the
grocer's shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg tobacco in
their pipes...

Let me tell you a story of To-Day,—very homely and narrow in its scope and aim. Not of the To-Day whose significance in the history of humanity only those shall read who will live when you and I are dead. Let us bear the pain in silence, if our hearts are strong enough, while the nations of the earth stand far off pitying...

One of the most curious cases I remember, when I practiced law in Virginia, was that of the Champernouns. The story is not long. In 1824, I was down in L—county, with Judge C—, at the Court of Appeals. Court adjourned the first week in October, but heavy rains made it impossible to return to Richmond, so that we were detained for about ten days in the village...

I remember an odd story about a will, which, I believe, I have never told before. It is not long, though it covers a good many years. One winter evening I was entertaining a few friends at dinner. Some Parisian notoriety was among them, and my housekeeper, intent on upholding the cuisine of old Virginia against all France, outdid herself...

Near the close of a crowded court clay, I was at work in my inner office with Messrs. Johns and Preston, counsel with myself in the Porton case, of which you have doubtless heard, if you know anything of the old dead-weights in Richmond courts...

Let me tell you the story of my first case, or stroke of business, as I used to call it. For many reasons I recall it with a more pungent, piquant flavor than any that ever came after. No great, lumbering cause that weighed my table down, after name and fame were fought for, and won, ever gave me the thrill of eager zest that accompanied that boyish venture...

I am a hard man. I wish you to remember that when I tell you my story. Hard, selfish, money-making. My life has been like this December day—bleak and gray, with a bit of red sunshine warming it up at the end...

I will tell you the story of my life, since you ask it; for, though the meaning of the life of any woman of my character would be the same, I believe, the facts of mine, being sharp and
compressed, may make it, perhaps, more apparent. It will be enough for me to give you the history of one day,—that of our first coming to Newport; for it seems to me as if it held and spoke out plainly whatever gist and significance there was in all the years for me...

It was near the close of a bright, quiet evening in the fall of the year 1791. The day had been dry and breathless, the sky filled with those sudden glints of hot color in the blue which hint at latent thunder. The storm would break during the night, people thought, glancing up into the sultry brown drift about the horizon and the vivid heat above, opening their doors and low windows, and coming out to sit on the balconies or porticos that faced the street...

“THAT’S all, sir. But I, I’ll never forget the way in which you’ve heard my story, father,” his rough voice a little unsteady...

It rains to-night, a sharp, sleety rain, driving against the windows with a low continual moan. It puts me in mind of the Banshee old Norry used to belong to our family, and who cried to warn them of death or danger. I wish it had been a “Brownie,” instead, who did all the work while the mistress slept...

A hot day in Lyons, fifty years ago; the untampered light staring down between the steep,
gambrel roofs into the close, dirty streets; the air, when it moved, heavy with the smell of the wine-presses and refuse of the vineyards along the Saone. In an upper front room of a house near the Hotel de Ville, about the hour of noon, two men waited, listening apparently for some sound within...

One of the oddest cases I remember, in my later practice, was that of Ben Pickett Moore, of which, I believe, I have not told you. I give the full name, as we usually did, for Ben belonged to one of those interminable Virginia family connections, in which it is necessary for a man to hold on constantly to his three names to preserve his identity at all...

It was an ominously dull evening, even in Broadway. The rain beat on the top of Miss Hubbard’s hackney-coach, and drenched the windows, and shut her and old Mrs. McIntosh inside into a little jolting cell of gloom uneasy discomfort...

I do not know a single well-authenticated ghost story. Besides ghost-stories are the poorest
prentice work in literature, if we tell the truth about them. They always fall stale and flat, no matter how we have worked ourselves up to a quake and shiver in the hearing...

Good arable? Yes, sir; and if you look at it in the way of scenery, it’s as pretty a bit of land as you’ll find in Kent county. That stretch now ahead. By the way, there was a queer thing
happened on the track just three years ago come Thanksgiving—as queer as ever came in my way since I’ve been railroading...

“THERE’S a man, now, that has been famous in his time,” said Davidge as we passed the mill, glancing in at the sunny gap in the side of the building. I paused incredulously: Phil’s lion so often turned out to be Snug the joiner. Phil was my chum at college...

“We’ll drive?” said young Chalkley, anxiously, halting on the steps of the Continental Hotel. He had Mr. Burgess, the English magazinist, in charge. “Oh, drive, of course!” beckoning to a hackman. If heaven had but willed him in this crisis of fate a buggy of his own—a team of any sort...

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Tarrytown, like every other Pennsylvania village, had its great man and its town fool. People boasted of the magnitude of the one and measured themselves by the littleness of the other. In any case they were complacent. Let what might come, Tarrytown was always complacent...

I have followed the history of the kidnapping of the child, Charlie Ross, and the efforts for his
discovery, with peculiar interest, owing to the fact that, in the course of my own experiences, I have had knowledge of one or two cases similar in kind...

During last winter there was an earnest movement among all the Protestant denominations in
Philadelphia to unite in a great Evangelical work. The churches were open for daily service, and the public was urged, entreated, almost driven, into them. Committees were appointed in each
church to visit from door to door, and to bring the subject of salvation before the inmates of each house...

THE child's eyes turned from her old black maumee, on whose lap she lay, to her mother,
kneeling beside her, and then out to the yard gay with dahlias and rich lilies, and the cotton-field beyond, which had been the boundaries of her little life...

THE incident of which you have asked me to give you an account occurred six years ago, but the details are still fresh in my memory. The matter impressed me at the time with peculiar force. I am quite sure that I cannot convey any of this impression to you...

A FEW years ago a young English artist, named Reid, who was traveling through this country, stopped for a day or two at Louisville, having found an old friend there. He urged this gentleman to go with him into the mountainous region of Tennessee and North Carolina...

Miss Wynn followed her brother out of his new house, and stood on the verandah. She looked
down at the slope of forest and farm land. “You ought to be a satisfied man, Stephen,” she said, in her full, hearty tones. “There is not a prettier home in Fauquier county. And so Lee will think, I’ll answer for her.”...

Of all the members of the Third Church, Mrs. Clarkson Tate was the one whose religion took the most practical turn. Neither prayers nor music ever brought the tears to her cool gray eyes, and she invariably criticized the sermon pretty sharply when we reached the church porch...

There can be little doubt that if the people of Ball’s Ferry had been asked to decide which was the most pious family in their midst, they would unanimously have named the Demmings. They had long ago been the nucleus about which the Presbyterian church had gathered...

In 1878, Wesley Nelson opened a little shop on Tresor Street, near the Basilica, in Quebec, for
the sale of stationery and newspapers. A little capital makes a large show in that kind of stock
than in any other; and young Nelson had only the money he had saved from his wages as clerk
on one of the small steamers plying to the lower St. Lawrence...

The McCall farm lies at the head of Ninegemoose Creek, in one of the hill counties of Pennsylvania. Old Stenifer McCall, a sturdy blacksmith, headed a party of Scotch emigrants who found their way into the wilderness in 1772...

THE train that rushed out of the wide winding suburbs of Washington down into Virginia, in the dawn of a cold February morning, was filled with Northerners going to New Orleans. They had, oddly enough, the alert, expectant air of explorers into an unknown country...

ROBERT KNIGHT, who was born, bred, and trained in New England, suckled on her creeds and weaned on her doubts, went directly from college to a Louisiana plantation. The change, as he felt, was extreme...

Among the reports of havoc and suffering caused by the great storm, our readers may not have noted a piteous little incident which occurred on the Pennsylvania Railway. An express train, rushing through the blinding blizzard, ran into a derailed car near Huntington. The engine was crushed as if it had been glass, and the engineer, Robert Gardner, was wedged immovably between the tender and boiler, the brass cocks of the latter being deeply bedded in the flesh of his thigh...

The schoolmaster and his wife, after morning meeting was over, took their way as usual down Prout’s Lane, and across the hill homeward. The path was narrow; the dominie walked
first. He [made] a remark at long intervals to his wife behind him, but without looking back...

IT was a strange thing, the like of which had never before happened to Anne. In her matter-of fact, orderly life mysterious impressions were rare. She tried to account for it afterward by
remembering that she had fallen asleep out-of-doors. And out-of-doors, where there is the hot sun and the sea and the teeming earth and tireless winds, there are perhaps great forces at work...

Miss Cabell had just finished breakfast. A tall mulatto in a turban brought in a pan of hot water and a supply of white towels, and Miss Cabell proceeded, after the custom of housewives in Delaware, to wash the dainty cups and spoons with which she and her brother had sipped their coffee...

AN Englishman who recently visited this country wrote from Boston to a friend: As I have so little time in America, I have decided to spend it all in New England. It is the American race that I wish to study, nor their scenery nor towns. I have always heard that in New England was the brain of the country, and that the Puritan blood first gave the distinctive
character to your people...

DOCTOR SAMUEL WARRICK was a surgeon in a Federal regiment from the beginning to the end of the Civil War. His wife, in the meantime, lived with her children in the old Warrick homestead near Luxborough in eastern Pennsylvania...

In another minute the Kaiser Wilhelm would push off from her pier in Hoboken. The last bell had rung, the last uniformed officer and white-jacketed steward had scurried up the gangway. The pier was massed with people who had come to bid their friends good-by...

The clock was pointing to six when Mrs. Shore and her son’s wife turned into a shaded street on their way home. The air blew sharply up from the sea. Mrs. Shore buttoned her fur cape and quickened her pace. Maria, as usual, lagged a step behind her. Maria was a tall, willowy girl with delicate features and milk and rose tints in her skin...

This account of an ordinary American family, its fortunes and its growth was given to me by one of its members. It is more significant because it is so commonplace. The story is true, except in two points. The name of the family is not Lawrence and they do not live in New Jersey...

I am going to tell you a true love story of the days when I was young, in order to show you a curious difference between that time and this. It seems to me that love and marriage counted for more in the life of Americans in those days than they do now...