The Mystery of Metropolisville. Eggleston Edward

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СКАЧАТЬ rendered one substantial though humble service to our literature, if I have portrayed correctly certain forms of American life and manners.

      BROOKLYN, March, 1873.

      PREFACE

      WORDS BEFOREHAND

      CHAPTER I. The Autocrat of the Stage-Coach

      CHAPTER II. The Sod Tavern

      CHAPTER III. Land and Love

      CHAPTER IV. Albert and Katy

      CHAPTER V. Corner Lots

      CHAPTER VI. Little Katy's Lover

      CHAPTER VII. Catching and Getting Caught

      CHAPTER VIII. Isabel Marlay

      CHAPTER IX. Lovers and Lovers

      CHAPTER X. Plausaby, Esq., takes a Fatherly Interest

      CHAPTER XI. About Several Things

      CHAPTER XII. An Adventure

      CHAPTER XIII. A Shelter

      CHAPTER XIV. The Inhabitant

      CHAPTER XV. An Episode

      CHAPTER XVI. The Return

      CHAPTER XVII. Sawney and his Old Love

      CHAPTER XVIII. A Collision

      CHAPTER XIX. Standing Guard in Vain

      CHAPTER XX. Sawney and Westcott

      CHAPTER XXI. Rowing

      CHAPTER XXII. Sailing

      CHAPTER XXIII. Sinking

      CHAPTER XXIV. Dragging

      CHAPTER XXV. Afterwards

      CHAPTER XXVI. The Mystery

      CHAPTER XXVII. The Arrest

      CHAPTER XXVIII. The Tempter

      CHAPTER XXIX. The Trial

      CHAPTER XXX. The Penitentiary

      CHAPTER XXXI. Mr. Lurton

      CHAPTER XXXII. A Confession

      CHAPTER XXXIII. Death

      CHAPTER XXXIV. Mr. Lurton's Courtship

      CHAPTER XXXV. Unbarred

      CHAPTER XXXVI. Isabel

      CHAPTER XXXVII. The Last

      WORDS AFTERWARDS

      ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK BEARD

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      The Superior Being

      Mr. Minorkey and the Fat Gentleman

      Plausaby sells Lots

      "By George! He! he! he!"

      Mrs. Plausaby

      The Inhabitant

      A Pinch of Snuff

      Mrs. Ferret

      One Savage Blow full in the Face

      "What on Airth's the Matter?"

      His Unselfish Love found a Melancholy Recompense

      The Editor of "The Windmill"

      "Git up and Foller!"

THE MYSTERY OF METROPOLISVILLE.

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WORDS BEFOREHAND.

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      Metropolisville is nothing but a memory now. If Jonah's gourd had not been a little too much used already, it would serve an excellent turn just here in the way of an apt figure of speech illustrating the growth, the wilting, and the withering of Metropolisville. The last time I saw the place the grass grew green where once stood the City Hall, the corn-stalks waved their banners on the very site of the old store—I ask pardon, the "Emporium"—of Jackson, Jones & Co., and what had been the square, staring white court-house—not a Temple but a Barn of Justice—had long since fallen to base uses. The walls which had echoed with forensic grandiloquence were now forced to hear only the bleating of silly sheep. The church, the school-house, and the City Hotel had been moved away bodily. The village grew, as hundreds of other frontier villages had grown, in the flush times; it died, as so many others died, of the financial crash which was the inevitable sequel and retribution of speculative madness. Its history resembles the history of other Western towns of the sort so strongly, that I should not take the trouble to write about it, nor ask you to take the trouble to read about it, if the history of the town did not involve also the history of certain human lives—of a tragedy that touched deeply more than one soul. And what is history worth but for its human interest? The history of Athens is not of value on account of its temples and statues, but on account of its men and women. And though the "Main street" of Metropolisville is now a country road where the dog-fennel blooms almost undisturbed by comers and goers, though the plowshare remorselessly turns over the earth in places where corner lots were once sold for a hundred dollars the front foot, and though the lot once sacredly set apart (on the map) as "Depot Ground" is now nothing but a potato-patch, yet there are hearts on which the brief history of Metropolisville has left traces ineffaceable by sunshine or storm, in time or eternity.

CHAPTER I.

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      THE AUTOCRAT OF THE STAGECOACH.

      "Git up!"

      No leader of a cavalry charge ever put more authority into his tones than did Whisky Jim, as he drew the lines over his four bay horses in the streets of Red Owl Landing, a village two years old, boasting three thousand inhabitants, and a certain prospect of having four thousand a month later.

      Even ministers, poets, and writers of unworldly romances are sometimes influenced by mercenary considerations. But stage-drivers are entirely consecrated to their high calling. Here was Whisky Jim, in the very streets of Red Owl, in СКАЧАТЬ