Dedicated to My Brother Charles Tolman Norris In memory of certain lamentable tales of the round (dining-room) table heroes; of the epic of the pewter platoons, and the romance-cycle of “Gaston Le Fox...

Curtis Jadwin, capitalist and speculator. Sheldon Corthell, an artist. Landry Court, broker’s clerk. Samuel Gretry, a broker. Charles Cressler, a dealer in grain. Mrs. Cressler, his wife. Laura Dearbo...

The Trilogy of The Epic of the Wheat includes the following novels: The Octopus, a Story of California. The Pit, a Story of Chicago. The Wolf, a Story of Europe. These novels, while forming a series, ...

At eight o’clock in the inner vestibule of the Auditorium Theatre by the window of the box office, Laura Dearborn, her younger sister Page, and their aunt⁠—Aunt Wess’⁠—were still waiting for the rest ...

Laura Dearborn’s native town was Barrington, in Worcester County, Massachusetts. Both she and Page had been born there, and there had lived until the death of their father, at a time when Page was rea...

On a certain Monday morning, about a month later, Curtis Jadwin descended from his office in the Rookery Building, and turning southward, took his way toward the brokerage and commission office of Gre...

In the front parlor of the Cresslers’ house a little company was gathered⁠—Laura Dearborn and Page, Mrs. Wessels, Mrs. Cressler, and young Miss Gretry, an awkward, plain-faced girl of about nineteen, ...

That year the spring burst over Chicago in a prolonged scintillation of pallid green. For weeks continually the sun shone. The Lake, after persistently cherishing the greys and bitter greens of the wi...

The months passed. Soon three years had gone by, and the third winter since the ceremony in St. James’ Church drew to its close. Since that day when⁠—acting upon the foreknowledge of the French import...

One morning in November of the same year Laura joined her husband at breakfast, preoccupied and a little grave, her mind full of a subject about which, she told herself, she could no longer keep from ...

On that particular morning in April, the trading around the Wheat Pit on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade began practically a full five minutes ahead of the stroke of the gong; and the throng o...

“Well, that’s about all then, I guess,” said Gretry at last, as he pushed back his chair and rose from the table. He and Jadwin were in a room on the third floor of the Grand Pacific Hotel, facing Jac...

The suicide of Charles Cressler had occurred on the tenth of June, and the report of it, together with the wretched story of his friend’s final surrender to a temptation he had never outlived, reached...

The evening had closed in wet and misty. All day long a chill wind had blown across the city from off the lake, and by eight o’clock, when Laura and Jadwin came down to the dismantled library, a heavy...