I like you and your book, ingenious Hone! In whose capacious all-embracing leaves The very marrow of tradition’s shown. Charles Lamb, “To the Editor of the Everyday Book”...

“Stay here beside her, major. I shall not he needed for an hour yet. Meanwhile I’ll go downstairs and snatch a bit of sleep, or talk to old Jane.” The night was hot and sultry. Though the windows of t...

They named the Carteret baby Theodore Felix. Theodore was a family name, and had been borne by the eldest son for several generations, the major himself being a second son. Having thus given the child...

To go back a little, for several days after his child’s birth Major Carteret’s chief interest in life had been confined to the four walls of the chamber where his pale wife lay upon her bed of pain, a...

The young heir of the Carterets had thriven apace, and at six months old was, according to Mammy Jane, whose experience qualified her to speak with authority, the largest, finest, smartest, and altoge...

As the southbound train was leaving the station at Philadelphia, a gentleman took his seat in the single sleeping-car attached to the train, and proceeded to make himself comfortable. He hung up his h...

As the train drew up at the station platform, Dr. Price came forward from the white waiting-room, and stood expectantly by the door of the white coach. Miller, having left his car, came down the platf...

Dr. Price was not entirely at ease in his mind as the two doctors drove rapidly from the hotel to Major Carteret’s. Himself a liberal man, from his point of view, he saw no reason why a colored doctor...

The campaign for white supremacy was dragging. Carteret had set out, in the columns of the Morning Chronicle, all the reasons why this movement, inaugurated by the three men who had met, six months be...

Carteret fished from the depths of the wastebasket and handed to the general an eighteen by twenty-four sheet, poorly printed on cheap paper, with a “patent” inside, a number of advertisements of prop...

Carteret did not forget what General Belmont had said in regard to Tom. The major himself had been young, not so very long ago, and was inclined toward indulgence for the foibles of youth. A young gen...

When Ellis, after this rebuff, had disconsolately taken his leave, Clara, much elated at the righteous punishment she had inflicted upon the slanderer, ran upstairs to the nursery, and, snatching Dodi...

One morning shortly after the opening of the hospital, while Dr. Miller was making his early rounds, a new patient walked in with a smile on his face and a broken arm hanging limply by his side. Mille...

Old Mr. Delamere’s servant, Sandy Campbell, was in deep trouble. A party of Northern visitors had been staying for several days at the St. James Hotel. The gentlemen of the party were concerned in a p...

When Mrs. Carteret had fully recovered from the shock attendant upon the accident at the window, where little Dodie had so narrowly escaped death or serious injury, she ordered her carriage one aftern...

As a stone dropped into a pool of water sets in motion a series of concentric circles which disturb the whole mass in varying degree, so Mrs. Ochiltree’s enigmatical remark had started in her niece’s ...

Late one afternoon a handsome trap, drawn by two spirited bays, drove up to Carteret’s gate. Three places were taken by Mrs. Carteret, Clara, and the major, leaving the fourth seat vacant. “I’ve asked...

It was only eleven o’clock, and Delamere, not being at all sleepy, and feeling somewhat out of sorts as the combined results of his afternoon’s debauch and the snubbing he had received at Clara’s hand...

Having finished cleaning his clothes, Sandy went out to the kitchen for supper, after which he found himself with nothing to do. Mr. Delamere’s absence relieved him from attendance at the house during...

Ellis left the office of the Morning Chronicle about eleven o’clock the same evening and set out to walk home. His boardinghouse was only a short distance beyond old Mr. Delamere’s residence, and whil...

On Friday morning, when old Mrs. Ochiltree’s cook Dinah went to wake her mistress, she was confronted with a sight that well-nigh blanched her ebony cheek and caused her eyes almost to start from her ...

About ten o’clock on the morning of the discovery of the murder, Captain McBane and General Belmont, as though moved by a common impulse, found themselves at the office of the Morning Chronicle. Carte...

Dr. Miller, who had sat up late the night before with a difficult case at the hospital, was roused, about eleven o’clock, from a deep and dreamless sleep. Struggling back into consciousness, he was in...

Miller did not reach his destination without interruption. At one point a considerable stretch of the road was under repair, which made it necessary for him to travel slowly. His horse cast a shoe, an...

The iron bolt rattled in the lock, the door of a cell swung open, and when Mr. Delamere had entered was quickly closed again. “Well, Sandy!” “Oh, Mars John! Is you fell from hebben ter he’p me out er ...

Mr. Delamere’s coachman, who, in accordance with instructions left by Miller, had brought the carriage around to the jail and was waiting anxiously at the nearest corner, drove up with some trepidatio...

Mr. Ellis was vaguely uncomfortable. In the first excitement following the discovery of the crime, he had given his bit of evidence, and had shared the universal indignation against the murderer. When...

Mr. Delamere went immediately to his grandson’s room, which he entered alone, closing and locking the door behind him. He had requested Ellis to wait in the carriage. The bed had been made, and the ro...

Wellington soon resumed its wonted calm, and in a few weeks the intended lynching was only a memory. The robbery and assault, however, still remained a mystery to all but a chosen few. The affair had ...

Events moved rapidly during the next few days. The reproduction, in the Chronicle, of the article from the Afro-American Banner, with Carteret’s inflammatory comment, took immediate effect. It touched...

Mrs. Carteret was very much disturbed. It was supposed that the shock of her aunt’s death had affected her health, for since that event she had fallen into a nervous condition which gave the major gra...

Mrs. Carteret awoke, with a start, from a troubled dream. She had been sailing across a sunlit sea, in a beautiful boat, her child lying on a bright-colored cushion at her feet. Overhead the swelling ...

The Wellington riot began at three o’clock in the afternoon of a day as fair as was ever selected for a deed of darkness. The sky was clear, except for a few light clouds that floated, white and feath...

The party under Josh’s leadership moved off down the road. Miller, while entirely convinced that he had acted wisely in declining to accompany them, was yet conscious of a distinct feeling of shame an...

Miller knocked at the door. There was no response. He went round to the rear of the house. The dog had slunk behind the woodpile. Miller knocked again, at the back door, and, receiving no reply, calle...

The proceedings of the day⁠—planned originally as a “demonstration,” dignified subsequently as a “revolution,” under any name the culmination of the conspiracy formed by Carteret and his colleagues⁠—h...

By the light of the burning building, which illuminated the street for several blocks, Major Carteret and Ellis made their way rapidly until they turned into the street where the major lived. Reaching...

Miller’s doorbell rang loudly, insistently, as though demanding a response. Absorbed in his own grief, into which he had relapsed upon Carteret’s departure, the sound was an unwelcome intrusion. Surel...