Lord Oakhurst lay dying in the oak chamber in the eastern wing of Oakhurst Castle. Through the open window in the calm of the summer evening, came the sweet fragrance of the early violets and budding ...

Lord Oakhurst lay dying in the oak chamber in the eastern wing of Oakhurst Castle. Through the open window in the calm of the summer evening, came the sweet fragrance of the early violets and budding ...

A carriage drove rapidly up the avenue and stopped at the door. Sir Everhard FitzArmond, the famous London physician, who had been telegraphed for, alighted and quickly ascended the marble steps. Lady...

Sir Everhard FitzArmond descended the stairway of Oakhurst Castle and passed out into the avenue that led from the doorway to the great iron gates of the park. Lord Oakhurst had been a great sportsman...

Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see the General Land Office. As you pass up the avenue you turn sharp round the corner of the courthouse, and on a steep hill before you you see...

Can you inform me where I can buy an interest in a newspaper of some kind? I have some money and would be glad to invest it in something of the sort, if someone would allow me to put in my capital aga...

The snake reporter of The Rolling Stone was wandering up the avenue last night on his way home from the Y.M.C.A. rooms when he was approached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevel...

“Press me no more Mr. Snooper,” said Gladys Vavasour-Smith. “I can never be yours.” “You have led me to believe different, Gladys,” said Bertram D. Snooper. The setting sun was flooding with golden li...

In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the name of Smothers. The family consisted of John Smothers, his wife, himself, their little daughter, five years of age, and her pa...

It is not generally known that Tictocq, the famous French detective, was in Austin last week. He registered at the Avenue Hotel under an assumed name, and his quiet and reserved manners singled him ou...

It is not generally known that Tictocq, the famous French detective, was in Austin last week. He registered at the Avenue Hotel under an assumed name, and his quiet and reserved manners singled him ou...

The drawing-rooms of one of the most magnificent private residences in Austin are a blaze of lights. Carriages line the streets in front, and from gate to doorway is spread a velvet carpet, on which t...

Tictocq’s room in the Avenue Hotel. A knock is heard at the door. Tictocq opens it and looks at his watch. “Ah,” he says, “it is just six. Entrez, Messieurs.” The messieurs entrez. There are seven of ...

’Tis midnight in Paris. A myriad of lamps that line the Champs Élysées and the Rouge et Noir, cast their reflection in the dark waters of the Seine as it flows gloomily past the Place Vendôme and the ...

(It will be remembered that about a month ago there were special rates offered to the public for a round trip to the City of Washington. The price of the ticket being exceedingly low, we secured a loa...

“Copy,” yelled the small boy at the door. The sick woman lying on the bed began to move her fingers aimlessly upon the worn counterpane. Her eyes were bright with fever; her face, once beautiful, was ...

The scene was one of supernatural weirdness. Tall, fantastic mountains reared their seamed peaks over a dreary waste of igneous rock and burned-out lava beds. Deep lakes of black water stood motionles...

The sun is shining brightly, and the birds are singing merrily in the trees! All nature wears an aspect of peace and harmony. On the porch of a little hotel in a neighboring county a stranger is sitti...

The other day a Houston man died and left a young and charming widow to mourn his loss. Just before the funeral, the pastor came around to speak what words of comfort he could, and learn her wishes re...

It is a busy scene in the rear of one of Houston’s greatest manufacturing establishments. A number of workmen are busy raising some heavy object by means of blocks and tackles. Somehow, a rope is worn...

A strong scent of onions and the kind of whisky advertised “for mechanical purposes” came through the keyhole, closely followed by an individual bearing a bulky manuscript under his arm about the size...

He was old and feeble and his sands of life were nearly run out. He walked with faltering steps along one of the most fashionable avenues in the city of Houston. He had left the city twenty years ago,...

It was late in the afternoon and the day staff was absent. The night editor had just come in, pulled off his coat, vest, collar, and necktie, rolled up his shirtsleeves and eased down his suspenders, ...

Here is a man in Houston who keeps quite abreast of the times. He reads the papers, has traveled extensively and is an excellent judge of human nature. He has a natural gift for detecting humbugs and ...

Dear Editor: I want to ask a question in arithmetic. I am a school boy and am anxious to know the solution. If my pa, who keeps a grocery on Milam Street, sells four cans of tomatoes for twenty-five c...

He was a great practical joker, and never lost a chance to get a good one on somebody. A few days ago he stopped a friend on Main Street and said, confidentially: “I never would have believed it, but ...

A Houston gentleman who is worth somewhere up in the hundreds of thousands and lives on eleven dollars a week, was sitting in his private office a few days ago, when a desperate looking man entered an...

When it becomes necessary for an actor to write a letter during the performance of a play, it is a custom to read the words aloud as he writes them. It is necessary to do this in order that the audien...

Unabridged Dictionary by Noah Webster, LL.D.F.R.S.X.Y.Z. We find on our table quite an exhaustive treatise on various subjects, written in Mr. Webster’s well-known, lucid, and piquant style. There is ...

The runaway couple had just returned, and she knelt at the old man’s feet and begged forgiveness. “Yes, forgive us,” cried the newly wedded husband. “Forgive me for taking her away from you, but see, ...

Bill Nye, who recently laid down his pen for all time, was a unique figure in the field of humor. His best work probably more nearly represented American humor than that of any other writer. Mr. Nye h...

It is time to call a halt upon the persistent spreaders of the alleged joke that a woman can not keep a secret. No baser ingratitude has been shown by man toward the fair sex than the promulgation of ...

The most popular and best loved young lady in the United States is Miss Annie Williams of Philadelphia. Her picture is possessed by more men, and is more eagerly sought after than that of Lillian Russ...

As he walked up to the bar he pulled up his collar with both hands and straightened the old red tie that was trying to creep around under one ear. The bartender glanced at him and then went on chippin...

The following conundrum was left at the office yesterday by a young man, who immediately fled: “Why is the coming Sunday like a very young body?” Answer: “Because it’s neck’s weak.” We do not see any ...

A man with a long, sharp nose and a big bundle which he carried by a strap went up the steps of the gloomy-looking brick house, set his bundle down, rang the bell, and took off his hat and wiped his b...

An ordinary-looking man wearing a last season’s negligee shirt stepped into the business office and unrolled a strip of manuscript some three feet long. “I wanted to see you about this little thing I ...

Few nights ago in a rather tough saloon in a little town on the Central Railroad, a big, strapping desperado, who had an unenviable reputation as a bad man generally, walked up to the bar and in a lou...

Although we can stand a great deal, this attack has goaded us to what is perhaps a bitter and cruel, but not entirely an unjustifiable revenge. Below will be found an editorial from the last number of...

“John,” said a Houston grocer the other day to one of his clerks. “You have been a faithful and competent clerk, and in order to show my appreciation, I have decided to take you into partnership. From...

A man without a collar, wearing a white vest and holes in his elbows, walked briskly into a Congress Street grocery last Saturday with a package in his hand and said: “Here, Fritz, I bought two dozen ...

The most popular and recent advertising dodge in literature is the Grand Guess Contest Mystery Story. Everybody is invited to guess how the story will end, at any time before the last chapter is publi...

Judge Smith, a highly esteemed citizen of Plunkville, is found murdered in his bed at his home. He has been stabbed with a pair of scissors, poisoned with “rough on rats.” His throat has been cut with...

The judge leaves a daughter, Mabel, aged eighteen, and ravishingly lovely. The night before the murder she exhibited a revolver and an axe in the principal saloon in town and declared her intention of...

A beautiful strange lady dressed in mourning comes to Plunkville and registers at the hotel as Jane Bumgartner. (The initials on the handkerchief!) The next day a Chinaman is found who denies having k...

While the Chinaman is being tried for murder, Jane Bumgartner testifies that she saw the detective murder Judge Smith at the instance of the minister who conducted the funeral, and that Mabel is Charl...

The footsteps prove to be those of Thomas R. Hefflebomer of Washington Territory, who introduces positive proof of having murdered the judge during a fit of mental aberration, and Mabel marries a man ...

He was seated on an empty box on Main Street late yesterday evening during the cold drizzling rain. He was poorly clad and his thick coat was buttoned up high under his chin. He had a woeful, harassed...

The man who keeps up with the latest scientific discoveries is abroad in the land. He knows all about bacilli, microbes, and all the various newly found foes to mankind. He reads the papers and heeds ...

“Speaking of the $140,000,000 paid out yearly by the government in pensions,” said a prominent member of Hood’s brigade to the Post’s representative, “I am told that a man in Indiana applied for a pen...

After the performance of “In Old Kentucky” Friday night three old cronies went into a saloon with the inflexible determination of taking a drink. After doing so, they added an amendment in the shape o...

Hungry Henry: Madam, I am state agent for a new roller-action, unbreakable, double-elastic suspender. Can I show you some? Mrs. Lonestreet: No, there ain’t no man on the place. Hungry Henry: Well, the...

Breakfast was over and Adam had gone to his daily occupation of pasting the names of the animals on their cages. Eve took the parrot to one side and said: “It was this way. He made a big kick about th...

There is an old colored preacher in Texas who is a great admirer of the Rev. Sam Jones.2 Last Sunday he determined to drop his old style of exhorting the brethren, and pitch hot shot plump into the mi...

Two Houston men were going home one rainy night last week, and as they stumbled and plowed through the mud across one of the principal streets, one of them said: “This is hell, isn’t it?” “Worse,” sai...

A man with a very pale face, wearing a woolen comforter and holding a slender stick in his hand, staggered into a Houston drug store yesterday and leaned against the counter, holding the other hand ti...

Junior Partner: Here’s an honest firm! Sharp and Simpson send us a check for $50 in addition to their monthly account, to cover difference in price of a higher grade of goods shipped them last time by...

The man with the bronzed face and distinguished air was a great traveler, and had just returned from a tour around the world. He sat around the stove at the Lamlor, and four or five drummers and men a...

There is a lady in Houston who is always having original ideas. Now, this is a very reprehensible thing in a woman and should be frowned down. A woman should find out what her husband thinks about eve...

A gentleman with long hair and an expression indicating heavenly resignation stepped off the twelve-thirty train at the Grand Central Depot yesterday. He had a little bunch of temperance tracts in his...

Brother, you should not have given us away. We just had to salt that vein before we could get it in the market, and when the “salt” gave out, and the end of the vein was reached, we hoped you wouldn’t...

The golden crescent of the new moon hung above the market house, and the night was cool, springlike, and perfect. Five or six men were sitting in front of the Hutchins House, and they had gradually sh...

A member of the Texas Legislature from one of the eastern counties was at the chrysanthemum show at Turner Hall last Thursday night, and was making himself agreeable to one of the lady managers. “You ...

They were two Houston girls, and they were taking a spin on their wheels. They met a fluffy girl who didn’t “bike,” out driving with a young man in a buggy. Of course they must say something about her...

“Dat Mr. Bergman, vot run de obera house, not dread me right,” said a Houston citizen. “Ven I go dere und vant ein dicket to see dot ‘Schpider und dot Vly’ gompany de oder night, I asg him dot he let ...

A Houston man who attended a great many of Sam Jones’s sermons was particularly impressed with his denunciation of prevaricators, and of lies of all kinds, white, variegated, and black. So strongly wa...

When Sousa’s Band was in Houston a week or so ago, Professor Sousa was invited to dine with a prominent citizen who had met him while on a visit to the North. This gentleman, while a man of high stand...

The new woman came in with a firm and confident tread. She hung her hat on a nail, stood her cane in the corner, and kissed her husband gayly as he was mixing the biscuit for supper. “Any luck today, ...

They lived in a neat little cottage on Prairie Avenue, and had been married about a year. She was young and sentimental and he was a clerk at fifty dollars per month. She sat rocking the cradle and lo...

A weary-looking man with dejected auburn whiskers, walked into the police station yesterday afternoon and said to the officer in charge: “I want to give myself up. I expect you had better handcuff me ...

There was something the matter with the electric lights Tuesday night, and Houston was as dark as Egypt when Moses blew the gas out. They were on Rusk Avenue, out on the lawn, taking advantage of the ...

A stranger walked into a Houston bank the other day and presented a draft to the cashier for payment. “You will have to be identified,” said the cashier, “by someone who knows your name to be Henry B....

They were speaking of the power of great orators, and each one had something to say of his especial favorite. The drummer was for backing Bourke Cockran for oratory against the world, the young lawyer...

There is one man we know who is about as clever a reasoner as this country has yet produced. He has a way of thinking out a problem that is sometimes little short of divination. One day last week his ...

He was tall and angular and had a keen gray eye and a solemn face. His dark coat was buttoned high and had something of a clerical cut. His pepper and salt trousers almost cleared the tops of his shoe...

They were sitting around a stove and the tobacco was passed around. They began to grow introspective. The talk turned upon their old homes and the changes that the cycling years bring about. They had ...

A meek-looking man, with one eye and a timid, shuffling gait, entered a Houston saloon while no one was in except the bartender, and said: “Excuse me, sir, but would you permit me to step behind the b...

He was one of the city’s wealthiest men, but he made no ostentatious display of his wealth. A little, thin, poorly clad girl stood looking in the window of the restaurant at the good things to eat. Th...

A certain Houston racing man was married some months ago. He also is the proud possessor of a fine two-year-old filly that has made five and a half furlongs in 1:09 and he expects her to do better at ...

A gentleman from Ohio, who has come South on a hunting trip, arrived in Houston, rather late one night last week, and on his way to a hotel stopped in a certain saloon to get a drink. A colored man wa...

It will be remembered that a short while ago, some very ancient documents and records were discovered in an old monastery on Mt. Sinai, where they have been kept filed away by the monks among their du...

The editor sat in his palatially furnished sanctum bending over a mass of manuscripts, resting his beetling brow upon his hand. It wanted but one hour of the time of going to press and there was that ...

“By the beard of the Prophet. Oh, Scheherezade, right well hast thou done,” said the Caliph, leaning back and biting off the end of a three-for. For one thousand nights Scheherezade No. 2, daughter of...

About two years ago one of the most popular young society men in Houston mysteriously disappeared. He had been the glass of fashion and the mold of form of the Magnolia City for several years. Especia...

The wind tears at the shingles that poorly cover the attic at the top of seven flights of stairs. The snow crystals, blown as fine as frost by the force of the tempest, buzz through crannies and sift ...

Two men were talking at the Grand Central depot yesterday, and one of them was telling about a difficulty he had recently been engaged in. “He said I was the biggest liar ever heard in Texas,” said th...

“You’re at the wrong place,” said Cerberus. “This is the gate that leads to the infernal regions, while it is a passport to Heaven that you have handed me.” “I know it,” said the departed shade wearil...

“Let’s see,” said the genial manager as he looked over the atlas. “Here’s a town one might strike on our way back. Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, is a city of 100,000 inhabitants.” “That sou...

There is an item going the rounds of the press relative to the well-known curiosity of woman. It states that if a man brings a newspaper home out of which a piece has been clipped his wife will never ...

The popular preacher sat in his study before a glowing grate, and a satisfied smile stole over his features, as he remembered his sermon of that morning. He had struck strong blows at sin; relating to...

“Did you report that suicide as I told you to do last night?” asked the editor of the new reporter, a graduate of a school of journalism. “I saw the corpse, sir, but found it impossible to write a des...

One night last week in San Antonio a tall, solemn-looking man, wearing a silk hat, walked into a hotel bar from the office, and stood by the stove where a group of men were sitting smoking and talking...

Young lady in Houston became engaged last summer to one of the famous shortstops of the Texas baseball league. Last week he broke the engagement, and this is the reason why. He had a birthday last Tue...

A Houston married couple. Scene⁠—Her boudoir. He: And now, Viola, since we understand each other, let us never fall out again. Let us forget the bitter words that we have spoken one to another, and re...

A Houston man decided a few days ago to buy his wife a piano for a Christmas present. Now, there is more competition, rivalry, and push among piano agents than any other class of men. The insurance an...

Young Lieutenant Baldwin burst excitedly into his general’s room and cried hoarsely: “For God’s sake, General! Up! Up! and come. Spotted Lightning has carried off your daughter, Inez!” General Splashe...

There is a Houston man who is a great lover of science and an ardent student of her mysteries. He has a small laboratory fitted up at home and spends a great deal of his time in experimenting with che...

This little story will be a disappointment to women who read it. They will all say: “I don’t see anything in that.” Probably there isn’t much. Mrs. Jessamine lives in Houston. You can meet any number ...

As the steamer reached Aransas Pass a Galveston man fell overboard. A life buoy was thrown him, but he thrust it aside contemptuously. A boat was hurriedly lowered, and reached him just as he came to ...

In the conservatory of a palatial Houston home Roland Pendergast stood with folded arms and an inscrutable smile upon his face, gazing down upon the upturned features of Gabrielle Smithers. “Why is it...

A man with a worn, haggard countenance that showed traces of deep sorrow and suffering rushed excitedly up the stairs into the editorial rooms of the Post. The literary editor was alone in his corner ...

Houston is the dwelling place of a certain young lady who is exceptionally blessed with the gifts of the goddess of fortune. She is very fair to look upon, bright, witty, and possesses that gracious c...

“You had better move your chair a little further back,” said the old resident. “I saw one of the Judkinses go into the newspaper office just now with his gun, and there may be some shooting.” The repo...

An old man with long white chin whiskers and a derby hat two sizes small, dropped into a Main Street drug store yesterday and beckoned a clerk over into a corner. He was about sixty-five years old, bu...

This is nothing but a slight jar in the happy holiday music; a minor note struck by the finger of Fate, slipping upon the keys, as anthems of rejoicing and Christmas carols make the Yuletide merry. Th...

He smelled of gin and his whiskers resembled the cylinder of a Swiss music box. He walked into a toy shop on Main Street yesterday and leaned sorrowfully against the counter. “Anything today?” asked t...

“I shall never again employ any but experienced salesmen, who thoroughly understand the jewelry business,” said a Houston jeweler to a friend yesterday. “You see, at Christmas time we generally need m...

“What are you looking so glum about?” asked a Houston man as he dropped into a friend’s office on Christmas Day. “Same old fool break of putting a letter in the wrong envelope, and I’m afraid to go ho...

“Who bids?” The auctioneer held up a child’s rocking-horse, battered and stained. It had belonged to some little member of the man’s family whose household property was being sold under the hammer. He...

Scene: Telegraph office in Houston. Young lady: Oh, I want to send a telegram at once, if you please. Give me about six blanks, please. Writes about ten minutes. How much will this amount to, please? ...

A farmer who lives about four miles from Houston noticed a stranger in his front yard one afternoon last week acting in a rather unusual manner. He wore a pair of duck trousers stuffed in his boots, a...

He is dead and I killed him. I gaze upon him, lying cold and still, with the crimson blood welling from his wound, and I laugh with joy. On my hand his life blood leaped and I hold it proudly aloft be...

What a terrible state of affairs it would be if we could read each other’s minds! It is safe to say that if such were the case, most of us would be afraid to think above a whisper. As an illustration,...

Spinsters must be up and doing: 1896 will be the only leap year for the next eight years. Once in every four years the wise men who made the calendar insert an extra day so that the average year will ...

Mr. Sharp: “My darling, it seems to me that every year that passes over your head but brings out some new charm, some hidden beauty, some added grace. There is a look in your eyes tonight that is as c...

Last week “The Rainmakers” gave two performances in Houston. At the night performance a prominent local politician occupied one of the front seats, as near to the stage as possible. He carried in his ...

Something has been recently disclosed that will fill every chivalrous man in the country with contrition. For a long time men have supposed that the habit of wearing tall hats at the theater by the la...

His coat was rusty and his hat out of style, but his nose glasses, secured by a black cord, lent him a distinguished air, and his manner was jaunty and assured. He stepped into a new Houston grocery y...

Jeremiah Q. Dilworthy lives away up on San Jacinto Street. He walks home every night. On January first, he promised his wife he would not take another drink in a year. He forgot his promise and on Tue...

The other day a lady canvasser came up into the Post editorial room with a book she was selling. She went into the editor-in-chief’s office, and her little five-year-old girl, who came up with her, re...

A young Houston mother rushed into the house the other day in the utmost excitement, calling out to her mother to put an iron on the fire as quick as possible. “What is the matter?” asked the old lady...

The Post Man had the pleasure of meeting Colonel Warburton Pollock yesterday in the rotunda of the New Hutchins. Colonel Pollock is one of the most widely known men in this country, and has probably a...

Last Tuesday afternoon a ragged and disreputable-looking man was noticed standing on a corner of Main Street. Several persons who had occasion to pass a second time along the street saw him still stan...

A youth held in his hand a round, red, luscious apple. “Eat,” said the Spirit, “it is the apple of life.” “I will have none of it,” said the Youth, and threw it far from him. “I will have success. I w...

Above all hangs the dreadful night. He pleads with her. His hand is on her arm. They stand in the cold, solemn night, gazing into a brilliantly lighted room. His face is white and terror-stricken. Her...

One of the greatest of books is the daily life around us. All that the human mind can conceive; all that the human heart can feel, and the lips tell are encompassed in the little world about us. He th...

The snake reporter of the Post was wending his way homeward last night when he was approached by a very gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and an emaciated face. “Can you tell me, sir,” he inqui...

And it came to pass that a man with a Cathode Ray went about the country finding out and showing the people, for a consideration, the insides of folks’ heads and what they were thinking about. And he ...

“Is the literary editor in?” The sporting editor looked up from the paper he was reading, and saw a vision of female loveliness about twenty years of age, with soft blue eyes, and a heavy mass of gold...

“Do you mean to tell me,” gasped the horrified gentleman from Boston, “that this man you speak of was shot and killed at a meeting of your debating society, and by the presiding officer himself, durin...

So the king fell into a furious rage, so that none durst go near him for fear, and he gave out that since the Princess Astla had disobeyed him there would be a great tourney, and to the knight who sho...

The Memphis Commercial-Appeal, in commenting on errors in grammar made by magazines, takes exception to an error in construction occurring in Gode’s Magazine in which, in J. H. Connelly’s story entitl...

A bold, bad man made a general display of himself in a Texas town a few days ago. It seems that he’d imbibed a sufficient number of drinks to become anxious to impress the town with his badness, and w...

One fine Saturday afternoon a young man got off the 9:10 p.m. Katy train at the Houston depot, and looked about him in rather a bewildered way. He was deliriously pastoral in his appearance, and prese...

A party of Northern tourists passed through Houston the other day, and while their train was waiting at the depot an old colored man, with one arm bandaged and hung in an old red handkerchief for a sl...

“How do I keep John home of nights?” asked a Houston lady of a friend the other day. “Well, I struck a plan once by a sudden inspiration, and it worked very nicely. John had been in a habit of going d...

Street car conductors often have their tempers tried by the inconsiderate portion of the public, but they are not allowed to ease their feelings by “talking back.” One of them related yesterday an occ...

There was no happier family in all Houston than the O’Malleys. Mr. O’Malley held a responsible position in one of our large breweries, and was a thrifty citizen and an indulgent husband and father. Hi...

The sheep man rejected the offer of a match, and lit his pipe from a burning brand. We were down on Buffalo Bayou fishing, and had cooked and eaten supper. Fried fresh fish, coffee, corn bread, potato...

The battle ground of San Jacinto is a historic spot, very dear to those who make the past reputation of Texas a personal matter. A Texan who does not thrill at the mention of the locality where Genera...

The doctor had long ago ceased his hospital practice, but whenever there was a case of special interest among the wards, his spirited team of bays was sure to be seen standing at the hospital gates. Y...

A solemn philanthropist was standing at a corner of the Market House square yesterday making a calculation in his head as to how long it would take a man to save enough beer money to build Solomon’s t...

A Post reporter met a young Houston physician the other afternoon, with whom he is well acquainted, and suggested that they go into a neighboring café and partake of a cooling lemonade. The physician ...

Willie Flint was a little Houston boy, six years of age. He was a beautiful child, with long golden curls and wondering, innocent blue eyes. His father was a respectable, sober citizen, who owned four...

“Will you go, Penelope?” asked Cyrus. “It is my duty,” I said. “It is a grand mission to go to Texas and carry what light I can to its benighted inhabitants. The school I am offered will pay me well, ...

Up to a few years ago man regarded the means of locomotion possessed by the fair sex as a sacred areanum into which it were desecration to inquire. The bicycle costume has developed the fact that ther...

James was a good boy. He would not tease his cat or his dog. He went to school. One day as he went home he saw a lady cross the street, and some rude boys tried to guy her. James took the lady by the ...

You will not find the name of Thomas Keeling in the Houston city directory. It might have been there by this time, if Mr. Keeling had not discontinued his business a month or so ago and moved to other...

“He hit me fust.” “He gimme de probumcation, judge.” “Nebber touched dat nigger tell he up en hit me wid er cheer.” They were two Houston negroes, and they were up before the recorder for fighting. “W...

A prominent Houston colonel, who is also a leading church member, started for church last Sunday morning with his family, as was his custom. He was serene and solid-looking, and his black frock coat a...

The first pale star peeped down the gorge. Above, to illimitable heights reached the Alps, snow-white above, shadowy around, and black in the depths of the gorge. A young and stalwart man, clad in the...

There was no happier couple in all Houston than George W. St. Bibbs and his wife before the shadow of the tempter crossed their path. It is remarkable how the tempter always comes up so his shadow wil...

A Post Reporter stood on the San Jacinto Street bridge last night. Half of a May moon swam in a sea of buttermilky clouds high in the east. Below, the bayou gleamed dully in the semidarkness, merging ...

The Post Man slid into the chair with an apologetic manner, for the barber’s gaze was superior and scornful. He was so devilish, cool and selfpossessed, and held the public in such infinite contempt. ...

Somebody⁠—who it was doesn’t make any difference⁠—has said something like the following: “There is something grand in the grief of the Common People, but there is no sadder sight on earth than that of...

When the Post Man entered the shop yesterday the chairs were full of customers, and for a brief moment he felt a thrill of hope that he might escape, but the barber’s eye, deadly and gloomy fixed itse...

Two men went into a saloon on Main Street yesterday and braced up solemnly to the bar. One was an old man with gray whiskers, the other was a long, lanky youth, evidently his son. Both were dressed li...

There are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That grim coast washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the sea a formidable border of tropical jungle topped by the overweening Cordilleras, is...

They will tell you in Anchuria, that President Miraflores, of that volatile republic, died by his own hand in the coast town of Coralio; that he had reached thus far in flight from the inconveniences ...

Coralio reclined, in the midday heat, like some vacuous beauty lounging in a guarded harem. The town lay at the sea’s edge on a strip of alluvial coast. It was set like a little pearl in an emerald ba...

Willard Geddie, consul for the United States in Coralio, was working leisurely on his yearly report. Goodwin, who had strolled in as he did daily for a smoke on the much coveted porch, had found him s...

Goodwin and the ardent patriot, Zavalla, took all the precautions that their foresight could contrive to prevent the escape of President Miraflores and his companion. They sent trusted messengers up t...

The plans for the detention of the flying President Miraflores and his companion at the coast line seemed hardly likely to fail. Dr. Zavalla himself had gone to the port of Alazan to establish a guard...

The United States of America, after looking over its stock of consular timber, selected Mr. John De Graffenreid Atwood, of Dalesburg, Alabama, for a successor to Willard Geddie, resigned. Without prej...

“What was this graft?” asked Johnny, with the impatience of the great public to whom tales are told. “ ’Tis contrary to art and philosophy to give you the information,” said Keogh, calmly. “The art of...

The new administration of Anchuria entered upon its duties and privileges with enthusiasm. Its first act was to send an agent to Coralio with imperative orders to recover, if possible, the sum of mone...

Spilled milk draws few tears from an Anchurian administration. Many are its lacteal sources; and the clocks’ hands point forever to milking time. Even the rich cream skimmed from the treasury by the b...

At the head of the insurgent party appeared that Hector and learned Theban of the southern republics, Don Sabas Placido. A traveller, a soldier, a poet, a scientist, a statesman and a connoisseur⁠—the...

One night when there was no breeze, and Coralio seemed closer than ever to the gratings of Avernus, five men were grouped about the door of the photograph establishment of Keogh and Clancy. Thus, in a...

Breakfast in Coralio was at eleven. Therefore the people did not go to market early. The little wooden market-house stood on a patch of short-trimmed grass, under the vivid green foliage of a breadfru...

John De Graffenreid Atwood ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower. The tropics gobbled him up. He plunged enthusiastically into his work, which was to try to forget Rosine. Now, they who dine on the...

Within a week a suitable building had been secured in the Calle Grande, and Mr. Hemstetter’s stock of shoes arranged upon their shelves. The rent of the store was moderate; and the stock made a fine s...

A two-inch stub of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh performed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered paper with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United Stat...

There is little consecutiveness along the Spanish Main. Things happen there intermittently. Even Time seems to hang his scythe daily on the branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta and a cigar...

It has been indicated that disaffection followed the elevation of Losada to the presidency. This feeling continued to grow. Throughout the entire republic there seemed to be a spirit of silent, sullen...

There remains three duties to be performed before the curtain falls upon the patched comedy. Two have been promised: the third is no less obligatory. It was set forth in the programme of this tropic v...

Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences do not demand dénoûements. Sufficient unto each “turn” is the evil thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comedienne ...

It was with much caution that Whistling Dick slid back the door of the boxcar, for Article 5716, City Ordinances, authorized (perhaps unconstitutionally) arrest on suspicion, and he was familiar of ol...

If you should chance to visit the General Land Office, step into the draughtsmen’s room and ask to be shown the map of Salado County. A leisurely German⁠—possibly old Kampfer himself⁠—will bring it to...

It was rare sport for a certain element in the town when old Bulger joined the Salvation Army. Bulger was the town’s odd “character,” a shiftless, eccentric old man, and a natural foe to social conven...

The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree’s law office was Goree himself, sprawled in his creaky old armchair. The rickety little office, built of red brick, was set flush with the street⁠—the main ...

When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the q...

For some months of a certain year a grim bandit infested the Texas border along the Rio Grande. Peculiarly striking to the optic nerve was this notorious marauder. His personality secured him the titl...

Robbins, reporter for the Picayune, and Dumars, of L’Abeille⁠—the old French newspaper that has buzzed for nearly a century⁠—were good friends, well proven by years of ups and downs together. They wer...

The westbound train stopped at San Rosario on time at 8:20 a.m. A man with a thick black-leather wallet under his arm left the train and walked rapidly up the main street of the town. There were other...

The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and a prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the street. The time was two o’clock in the morning; the outlook...

It was neither the season nor the hour when the Park had frequenters; and it is likely that the young lady, who was seated on one of the benches at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden imp...

“Aunt Ellen,” said Octavia, cheerfully, as she threw her black kid gloves carefully at the dignified Persian cat on the window-seat, “I’m a pauper.” “You are so extreme in your statements, Octavia, de...

At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed rangers sweltered in a little ’dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful espionage upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican...

In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their ta...

Again today, at a certain street, on the ragged boundaries of the city, Lawrence Holcombe stopped the trolley car and got off. Holcombe was a handsome, prosperous business man of forty; a man of high ...

Dr. Satterfield Prince, physician to the leisure class, looked at his watch. It indicated five minutes to twelve. At the stroke of the hour would expire the morning term set apart for the reception of...

“The dispositions of woman,” said Jeff Peters, after various opinions on the subject had been advanced, “run, regular, to diversions. What a woman wants is what you’re out of. She wants more of a thin...

In Texas you may travel a thousand miles in a straight line. If your course is a crooked one, it is likely that both the distance and your rate of speed may be vastly increased. Clouds there sail sere...

“Find yo’ shirt all right, Sam?” asked Mrs. Webber, from her chair under the live-oak, where she was comfortably seated with a paperback volume for company. “It balances perfeckly, Marthy,” answered S...

The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an...

Grandemont Charles was a little Creole gentleman, aged thirty-four, with a bald spot on the top of his head and the manners of a prince. By day he was a clerk in a cotton broker’s office in one of tho...

At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound B. & M. express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxur...

“Actually, a hod!” repeated Mrs. Kinsolving, pathetically. Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore arched a sympathetic eyebrow. Thus she expressed condolence and a generous amount of apparent surprise. “Fancy her tell...

Out of the wilderness had come a painter. Genius, whose coronations alone are democratic, had woven a chaplet of chaparral for the brow of Lonny Briscoe. Art, whose divine expression flows impartially...

If you are knowing in the chronicles of the ring you will recall to mind an event in the early ’nineties when, for a minute and sundry odd seconds, a champion and a “would-be” faced each other on the ...

Mr. Penne, an author Miss Lore, an amanuensis Scene⁠—Workroom of Mr. Penne’s popular novel factory. Mr. Penne: Good morning, Miss Lore. Glad to see you so prompt. We should finish that June installmen...

I go to seek on many roads What is to be. True heart and strong, with love to light⁠— Will they not bear me in the fight To order, shun or wield or mould My Destiny? Unpublished Poems of David Mignot ...

Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle. It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David stood, uncertain, for a while, and then took the road to the left. Upon thi...

Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle. It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David stood, uncertain, for a while, and then took the road to the right. Whither...

Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puzzle. It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David stood, uncertain, for a while, and then sat himself to rest upon its side. ...

Mysteries follow one another so closely in a great city that the reading public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have ceased to marvel at his sudden and unexplained disappearance nearly a year a...

A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that...

The judge of the United States court of the district lying along the Rio Grande border found the following letter one morning in his mail: Judge: When you sent me up for four years you made a talk. Am...

Promptly at the beginning of twilight, came again to that quiet corner of that quiet, small park the girl in gray. She sat upon a bench and read a book, for there was yet to come a half hour in which ...

Not the least important of the force of the Weymouth Bank was Uncle Bushrod. Sixty years had Uncle Bushrod given of faithful service to the house of Weymouth as chattel, servitor, and friend. Of the c...

The Captain gazed gloomily at his sword that hung upon the wall. In the closet nearby was stored his faded uniform, stained and worn by weather and service. What a long, long time it seemed since thos...

Without knowing it, Old Bill Bascom had the honor of being overtaken by fate the same day with the Marquis of Borodale. The Marquis lived in Regent Square, London. Old Bill lived on Limping Doe Creek,...

Okochee, in Georgia, had a boom, and J. Pinkney Bloom came out of it with a “wad.” Okochee came out of it with a half-million-dollar debt, a two and a half percent city property tax, and a city counci...

I saw a light in Jeff Peters’s room over the Red Front Drug Store. I hastened toward it, for I had not known that Jeff was in town. He is a man of the Hadji breed, of a hundred occupations, with a sto...

Justice-of-the-Peace Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office smoking his elder-stem pipe. Halfway to the zenith the Cumberland range rose blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered ...

On a summer’s day, while the city was rocking with the din and red uproar of patriotism, Billy Casparis told me this story. In his way, Billy is Ulysses, Jr. Like Satan, he comes from going to and fro...

Supper was over, and there had fallen upon the camp the silence that accompanies the rolling of cornhusk cigarettes. The water hole shone from the dark earth like a patch of fallen sky. Coyotes yelped...

Supper was over, and there had fallen upon the camp the silence that accompanies the rolling of cornhusk cigarettes. The water hole shone from the dark earth like a patch of fallen sky. Coyotes yelped...

Jimmy Hayes became a favourite in the ranger camp. He had an endless store of good-nature, and a mild, perennial quality of humour that is well adapted to camp life. He was never without his horned fr...

Nearly a year afterward⁠—after many camping grounds and many hundreds of miles guarded and defended⁠—Lieutenant Manning, with almost the same detachment of men, was sent to a point only a few miles be...

Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was four dollars between us, and Tobin had need of distractions. For there was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost ...

Brown as a coffee-berry, rugged, pistoled, spurred, wary, indefeasible, I saw my old friend, Deputy-Marshal Buck Caperton, stumble, with jingling rowels, into a chair in the marshal’s outer office. An...

There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years, and then it broke out on me, and people said I was It. But they called it humor instead of measles. The employees in the store b...

I never could quite understand how Tom Hopkins came to make that blunder, for he had been through a whole term at a medical college⁠—before he inherited his aunt’s fortune⁠—and had been considered str...

There had to be a king and queen, of course. The king was a terrible old man who wore six-shooters and spurs, and shouted in such a tremendous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into the...

The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing. At the end of that time it was worth it. Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you would have heard of it. It ...

Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise City, Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow had been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a le...

While we were rounding up a bunch of the Triangle-O cattle in the Frio bottoms a projecting branch of a dead mesquite caught my wooden stirrup and gave my ankle a wrench that laid me up in camp for a ...

At the stroke of six Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was a tailor’s apprentice. Are there tailor’s apprentices nowadays? At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and pat...

There is no Tenderloin. There never was. That is, none that you could run a tapeline around. The word really implies a condition or a quality⁠—much as you would say “reprehensibility” or “cold feet.” ...

Nine o’clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen’s Hotel. Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-gro...

At the street corner, as solid as granite in the “rush-hour” tide of humanity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had stained him berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the ...

“Eighty-first Street⁠—let ’em out, please,” yelled the shepherd in blue. A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated...

Lawyer Gooch bestowed his undivided attention upon the engrossing arts of his profession. But one flight of fancy did he allow his mind to entertain. He was fond of likening his suite of office rooms ...

In behalf of Sir Walter’s soothing plant let us look into the case of Martin Burney. They were constructing the Speedway along the west bank of the Harlem River. The grub-boat of Dennis Corrigan, subc...

I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New York scenes and incidents⁠—something typical, I told him, without necessarily having to spell the first syllable with an “i.” “Oh, f...

At 8 a.m. it lay on Giuseppi’s newsstand, still damp from the presses. Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite corner, leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a ...

To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips brought the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there were two items bearing the same foreign postmark. One of the incoming p...

If you should speak of the Kiowa Reservation to the average New Yorker he probably wouldn’t know whether you were referring to a new political dodge at Albany or a leitmotif from Parsifal. But out in ...

This is the story of the man manager, and how he held his own until the very last paragraph. I had it from Sully Magoon, viva voce. The words are indeed his; and if they do not constitute truthful fic...

But a clerk in the Cut-rate Drug Store was Samuel Tansey, yet his slender frame was a pad that enfolded the passion of Romeo, the gloom of Laura, the romance of D’Artagnan, and the desperate inspirati...

I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York detective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the “inside man” of the city detective force. He is an expert in the u...

The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few. The time was barely 10 o’clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind...

The young man in straitened circumstances who comes to New York City to enter literature has but one thing to do, provided he has studied carefully his field in advance. He must go straight to Madison...

Mr. Towers Chandler was pressing his evening suit in his hall bedroom. One iron was heating on a small gas stove; the other was being pushed vigorously back and forth to make the desirable crease that...

Calliope Catesby was in his humours again. Ennui was upon him. This goodly promontory, the earth⁠—particularly that portion of it known as Quicksand⁠—was to him no more than a pestilent congregation o...

Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one where you go up three steps, and the bell tinkles when you open the door). Miss Martha was forty, her bankbook showed a credit of two ...

Away out in the Creek Nation we learned things about New York. We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the bank of a little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our skilled hunter and guide, and ...

Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker, allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at h...

One winter the Alcazar Opera Company of New Orleans made a speculative trip along the Mexican, Central American and South American coasts. The venture proved a most successful one. The music-loving, i...

If you do not know Bogle’s Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your loss. For if you are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively you should be interested to know how the other half consumes ...

Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a train would be a hard job. Well, it isn’t; it’s easy. I have contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia o...

It is hardly likely that a goddess may die. Then Eastre, the old Saxon goddess of spring, must be laughing in her muslin sleeve at people who believe that Easter, her namesake, exists only along certa...

Do you know the time of the dogmen? When the forefinger of twilight begins to smudge the clear-drawn lines of the Big City there is inaugurated an hour devoted to one of the most melancholy sights of ...

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three ...

Surely there is no pastime more diverting than that of mingling, incognito, with persons of wealth and station. Where else but in those circles can one see life in its primitive, crude state unhampere...

I sat an hour by sun, in the editor’s room of the Montopolis Weekly Bugle. I was the editor. The saffron rays of the declining sunlight filtered through the cornstalks in Micajah Widdup’s garden-patch...

In the old, old, square-porticoed mansion, with the wry window-shutters and the paint peeling off in discoloured flakes, lived one of the last of the war governors. The South has forgotten the enmity ...

Harlem. Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy’s flat one flight below. “Ain’t it a beaut?” said Mrs. Cassidy. She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye was nearly closed, ...

Big Jim Dougherty was a sport. He belonged to that race of men. In Manhattan it is a distinct race. They are the Caribs of the North⁠—strong, artful, self-sufficient, clannish, honorable within the la...

We rubber plants form the connecting link between the vegetable kingdom and the decorations of a Waldorf-Astoria scene in a Third Avenue theatre. I haven’t looked up our family tree, but I believe we ...

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience. Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it. All...

There, were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. Masie was one of them. She was eighteen and a saleslady in the gents’ gloves. Here she became versed in two varieties of human beings⁠—the kind of gents w...

I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time when I called “Hallo!” at his hitching-rack; but from that mo...

All that day⁠—in fact from the moment of his creation⁠—Van Sweller had conducted himself fairly well in my eyes. Of course I had had to make many concessions; but in return he had been no less conside...

“One thousand dollars,” repeated Lawyer Tolman, solemnly and severely, “and here is the money.” Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as he fingered the thin package of new fifty-dollar notes. “...

One may hope, in spite of the metaphorists, to avoid the breath of the deadly upas tree; one may, by great good fortune, succeed in blacking the eye of the basilisk; one might even dodge the attention...

Robert Walmsley’s descent upon the city resulted in a Kilkenny struggle. He came out of the fight victor by a fortune and a reputation. On the other hand, he was swallowed up by the city. The city gav...

Said Mr. Kipling, “The cities are full of pride, challenging each to each.” Even so. New York was empty. Two hundred thousand of its people were away for the summer. Three million eight hundred thousa...

“Next Sunday,” said Dennis Carnahan, “I’ll be after going down to see the new Coney Island that’s risen like a phoenix bird from the ashes of the old resort. I’m going with Norah Flynn, and we’ll fall...

There is a hotel on Broadway that has escaped discovery by the summer-resort promoters. It is deep and wide and cool. Its rooms are finished in dark oak of a low temperature. Homemade breezes and deep...

New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless, for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze was south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme wa...

John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted with what his comrades called Japanitis. Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second story of the engine-ho...

In the Gate City of the South the Confederate Veterans were reuniting; and I stood to see them march, beneath the tangled flags of the great conflict, to the hall of their oratory and commemoration. W...

The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight of Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story windo...

Twenty miles west of Tucson, the “Sunset Express” stopped at a tank to take on water. Besides the aqueous addition the engine of that famous flyer acquired some other things that were not good for it....

Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished ro...

George Washington, with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square, forever signaling the Broadway cars to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But...

The original news item concerning the diamond of the goddess Kali was handed in to the city editor. He smiled and held it for a moment above the wastebasket. Then he laid it back on his desk and said:...

“I see,” remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black slouch hat, “that another street car motorman in your city has narrowly excaped lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting ...

Few young couples in the Big-City-of-Bluff began their married existence with greater promise of happiness than did Mr. and Mrs. Claude Turpin. They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they ...

Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna, sat on his favourite bench in the park. The coolness of the September night quickened the life in him like a rare, tonic wine. The benches were not fill...

The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his time. A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else. The house was a private residence. By its bo...

The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bri...

Miss Posie Carrington had earned her success. She began life handicapped by the family name of “Boggs,” in the small town known as Cranberry Corners. At the age of eighteen she had acquired the name o...

The editor of the Hearthstone Magazine has his own ideas about the selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mah...

In The Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. All the agencies of inquisition⁠—the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the city’...

The cabby has his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps, than that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic part...

Not many days ago my old friend from the tropics, J. P. Bridger, United States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We had wassail and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed see...

Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to attend one of these dances you must be a member of the G...

At the hazard of wearying you this tale of vehement emotions must be prefaced by a discourse on geometry. Nature moves in circles; Art in straight lines. The natural is rounded; the artificial is made...

Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for anything he usually⁠—but this is not Baldy’s story. He poured out a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and s...

Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say “old” Mack; but he wasn’t old. Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old. “A...

On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench ...

Cherokee was the civic father of Yellowhammer. Yellowhammer was a new mining town constructed mainly of canvas and undressed pine. Cherokee was a prospector. One day while his burro was eating quartz ...

Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the wa...

Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer resorts. It lies on a low spur of the Cumberland range of mountains on a little tributary of the Clinch River. Lakelands proper is ...

It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another for the first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky process, this love at first sight, before she has seen him in Bradst...

My wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the front door. There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the uni...

Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. Bu...

When one loves one’s Art no service seems too hard. That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new thing i...

If you are a philosopher you can do this thing: you can go to the top of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet below, and despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black water...

At midnight the café was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx o...

The critics have assailed every source of inspiration save one. To that one we are driven for our moral theme. When we levied upon the masters of old they gleefully dug up the parallels to our columns...

When “Kid” Brady was sent to the rope by Molly McKeever’s blue-black eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of a colleen’s blanderin’ tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If ...

As mathematics are⁠—or is: thanks, old subscriber!⁠—the only just rule by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all means, adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced column o...

Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, says to me once in Little Rock: “If you ever lose your mind, Billy, and get too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to Ne...

Half a dozen people supping at a table in one of the upper-Broadway all-night restaurants were making too much noise. Three times the manager walked past them with a politely warning glance; but their...

There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about a mystery. So I began to inquire. It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suitcases. And then I began to as...

I don’t suppose it will knock any of you people off your perch to read a contribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves ...

Old Anthony Rockwall, retired manufacturer and proprietor of Rockwall’s Eureka Soap, looked out the library window of his Fifth Avenue mansion and grinned. His neighbour to the right⁠—the aristocratic...

I was walking in Central Park with Avery Knight, the great New York burglar, highwayman, and murderer. “But, my dear Knight,” said I, “it sounds incredible. You have undoubtedly performed some of the ...

The honeymoon was at its full. There was a flat with the reddest of new carpets, tasselled portières and six steins with pewter lids arranged on a ledge above the wainscoting of the dining-room. The w...

There is an aristocracy of the public parks and even of the vagabonds who use them for their private apartments. Vallance felt rather than knew this, but when he stepped down out of his world into cha...

From near the village of Harmony, at the foot of the Green Mountains, came Miss Medora Martin to New York with her color-box and easel. Miss Medora resembled the rose which the autumnal frosts had spa...

A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The southbound from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train was Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat. Espirition, the Mexican, w...

It was a day in March. Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instan...

The May moon shone bright upon the private boardinghouse of Mrs. Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its hey...

At ten o’clock p.m. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She detested the policeman and objected earnestly to the arrangement...

Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budd...

The other day I ran across my old friend Ferguson Pogue. Pogue is a conscientious grafter of the highest type. His headquarters is the Western Hemisphere, and his line of business is anything from spe...

When the inauguration was accomplished⁠—the proceedings were made smooth by the presence of the Rough Riders⁠—it is well known that a herd of those competent and loyal ex-warriors paid a visit to the ...

Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to the...

Ravenel⁠—Ravenel, the traveller, artist and poet, threw his magazine to the floor. Sammy Brown, broker’s clerk, who sat by the window, jumped. “What is it, Ravvy?” he asked. “The critics been hammerin...

Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sa...

I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and undertook a thing that I’d have to apologize for even under th...

I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. But, one time, as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and undertook a thing that I’d have to apologize for even under th...

After breakfast we went out on the front porch, lighted up two of the landlord’s flor de upas perfectos, and took a look at Georgia. The installment of scenery visible to the eye looked mighty poor. A...

Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham. We finally selected an upright slice of topography covere...

About four o’clock in the afternoon, Caligula, who was acting as lookout, calls to me: “I have to report a white shirt signalling on the starboard bow, sir.” I went down the mountain and brought back ...

The Rubberneck Auto was about ready to start. The merry top-riders had been assigned to their seats by the gentlemanly conductor. The sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers who had gathered to stare a...

Usually it is a cold day in July when you can stroll up Broadway in that month and get a story out of the drama. I found one a few breathless, parboiling days ago, and it seems to decide a serious que...

In an art exhibition the other day I saw a painting that had been sold for $5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the West named Kraft, who had a favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was...

Dear Reader: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was⁠—oh, bother t...

Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need not listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant...

We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and th...

“We sail at eight in the morning on the Celtic,” said Honoria, plucking a loose thread from her lace sleeve. “I heard so,” said young Ives, dropping his hat, and muffing it as he tried to catch it, “a...

“During the recent warmed-over spell,” said my friend Carney, driver of express wagon No. 8,606, “a good many opportunities was had of observing human nature through peekaboo waists. “The Park Commiss...

First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then...

Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven...

Vuyning left his club, cursing it softly, without any particular anger. From ten in the morning until eleven it had bored him immeasurably. Kirk with his fish story, Brooks with his Puerto Rico cigars...

The other day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communion with nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor. It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the field...

Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen Quigg. Quigg’s restaurant is in Fourth Avenue⁠—that street that the cit...

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference. They tell me that with a large...

A red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of bl...

One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue boardinghouse, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore ...

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called “places.” These “places” make strange angles and curves. One street crosses its...

No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie series. But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there might have been a chapter in her books not very different from t...

Half of this story can be found in the records of the Police Department; the other half belongs behind the business counter of a newspaper office. One afternoon two weeks after Millionaire Norcross wa...

Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. Oh, very well! Pass up this sotto voce autobiography of an X if y...

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks...

Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective! Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise up and confound the other. Take the case of Lorison. ...

Returning from a hunting trip, I waited at the little town of Los Piños, in New Mexico, for the southbound train, which was one hour late. I sat on the porch of the Summit House and discussed the func...

The trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid’s fault, for he should have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the Kid was past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one’s credit at ...

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s ch...

The gods, lying beside their nectar on ’Lympus and peeping over the edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ...

Being acquainted with a newspaper reporter who had a couple of free passes, I got to see the performance a few nights ago at one of the popular vaudeville houses. One of the numbers was a violin solo ...

This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance lecture and the “Bartender’s Guide.” Relative to the latter, drink shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to ...

It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of Navarro & Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at. Twenty thousa...

Long before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom of the yokel does the city man know that the grass-green goddess is upon her throne. He sits at his breakfast eggs and toast, begirt by stone walls...

I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it comes to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial conceptions of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in num...

Down South whenever anyone perpetrates some particularly monumental piece of foolishness everybody says: “Send for Jesse Holmes.” Jesse Holmes is the Fool-Killer. Of course he is a myth, like Santa Cl...

’Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and ...

Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a gentleman⁠—a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked bor...

The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our brows wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in hand with sociology in the summer fields. Likely as not the...

In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 962 were the words: “Robbins & Hartley, Brokers.” The clerks had gone. It was past five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Perche...

I walked the streets of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight of a stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick and alike as the grains in a sandstorm; and you grow to h...

Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear “shopgirls” spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way....

Curly the tramp sidled toward the free-lunch counter. He caught a fleeting glance from the bartender’s eye, and stood still, trying to look like a business man who had just dined at the Menger and was...

The New York Enterprise sent H. B. Calloway as special correspondent to the Russo-Japanese-Portsmouth war. For two months Calloway hung about Yokohama and Tokyo, shaking dice with the other correspond...

The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of what it is not⁠—and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore...

On an eastbound train I went into the smoker and found Jefferson Peters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use his cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla oblongata at the same time...

There are no more Christmas stories to write. Fiction is exhausted; and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever young journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessi...

Golden by day and silver by night, a new trail now leads to us across the Indian Ocean. Dusky kings and princes have found our Bombay of the West; and few be their trails that do not lead down to Broa...

We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly in repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it for their especial dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their ...

Only on the lower East Side of New York do the houses of Capulet and Montagu survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your opposing hous...

Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake the bottle before using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated a small sponge with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the...

Across our two dishes of spaghetti, in a corner of Provenzano’s restaurant, Jeff Peters was explaining to me the three kinds of graft. Every winter Jeff comes to New York to eat spaghetti, to watch th...

Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the Minerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his offic...

I go sometimes into the Bierhalle and restaurant called Old Munich. Not long ago it was a resort of interesting Bohemians, but now only artists and musicians and literary folk frequent it. But the Pil...

The Cisco Kid had killed six men in more or less fair scrimmages, had murdered twice as many (mostly Mexicans), and had winged a larger number whom he modestly forbore to count. Therefore a woman love...

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama⁠—Bill Driscoll and myself⁠—when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a ...

The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold. They were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta of Fifth Avenue and Broadway. The Bed Liners stamped their freezi...

A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; b...

“You are a man of many novel adventures and varied enterprises,” I said to Captain Patricio Maloné. “Do you believe that the possible element of good luck or bad luck⁠—if there is such a thing as luck...

He compelled my interest as he stepped from the ferry at Desbrosses Street. He had the air of being familiar with hemispheres and worlds, and of entering New York as the lord of a demesne who revisite...

“In the tropics” (“Hop-along” Bibb, the bird fancier, was saying to me) “the seasons, months, fortnights, weekends, holidays, dog-days, Sundays, and yesterdays get so jumbled together in the shuffle t...

“A trust is its weakest point,” said Jeff Peters. “That,” said I, “sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such as, ‘Why is a policeman?’ ” “It is not,” said Jeff. “There are no relations betw...

Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money as there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston, SC. Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold liniments...

Jeff Peters must be reminded. Whenever he is called upon, pointedly, for a story, he will maintain that his life has been as devoid of incident as the longest of Trollope’s novels. But lured, he will ...

“I see that the cause of Education has received the princely gift of more than fifty millions of dollars,” said I. I was gleaning the stray items from the evening papers while Jeff Peters packed his b...

“Many of our great men,” said I (apropos of many things), “have declared that they owe their success to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.” “I know,” said Jeff Peters. “I’ve read in hi...

“As I have told you before,” said Jeff Peters, “I never had much confidence in the perfidiousness of woman. As partners or coeducators in the most innocent line of graft they are not trustworthy.” “Th...

“Satan,” said Jeff Peters, “is a hard boss to work for. When other people are having their vacation is when he keeps you the busiest. As old Dr. Watts or St. Paul or some other diagnostician says: ‘He...

Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession was under discussion. “The only times,” said he, “that me and Andy Tucker ever had any hiatuses in our cordial intents was when we dif...

“I hope some day to retire from business,” said Jeff Peters; “and when I do I don’t want anybody to be able to say that I ever got a dollar of any man’s money without giving him a quid pro rata for it...

“I never could hold my partner, Andy Tucker, down to legitimate ethics of pure swindling,” said Jeff Peters to me one day. “Andy had too much imagination to be honest. He used to devise schemes of mon...

Miss Lynnette D’Armande turned her back on Broadway. This was but tit for tat, because Broadway had often done the same thing to Miss D’Armande. Still, the “tats” seemed to have it, for the ex-leading...

There are few Caliphesses. Women are Scheherazades by birth, predilection, instinct, and arrangement of the vocal cords. The thousand and one stories are being told every day by hundreds of thousands ...

The great city of Bagdad-on-the-Subway is caliph-ridden. Its palaces, bazaars, khans, and byways are thronged with Al Rashids in divers disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled gen...

When the war between Spain and George Dewey was over, I went to the Philippine Islands. There I remained as bushwhacker correspondent for my paper until its managing editor notified me that an eight-h...

Ben Granger is a war veteran aged twenty-nine⁠—which should enable you to guess the war. He is also principal merchant and postmaster of Cadiz, a little town over which the breezes from the Gulf of Me...

When The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a stock company in Toombs City, Georgia, there was never but one candidate for its chief editorial position in the minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfa...

There are many kinds of fools. Now, will everybody please sit still until they are called upon specifically to rise? I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony, pretended my...

Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from the Rancho Altito at the end of a three-months’ visit. It is not to be expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscui...

I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people. You’ve been touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper criticisms and the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the chorus gir...

Night had fallen on that great and beautiful city known as Bagdad-on-the-Subway. And with the night came the enchanted glamour that belongs not to Arabia alone. In different masquerade the streets, ba...

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Piños swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man...

Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a downtown broker, so rich that he could afford to walk⁠—for his health⁠—a few blocks in the directio...

Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a downtown broker, so rich that he could afford to walk⁠—for his health⁠—a few blocks in the directio...

It is a common custom to refer to the usual complication between one man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man and a nobleman, or⁠—well, any of those problems⁠—as the triangle. ...

Two months are supposed to have elapsed. Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It was a good place for her. Many places are provided in the world where men and women may repai...

Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara’s door close upstairs. The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen minutes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself ...

When Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Warren were spinning softly homeward in a closed carriage, after the ceremony, Gilbert said: “Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote you in the letter that you re...

The spectacle of the money-caliphs of the present day going about Bagdad-on-the-Subway trying to relieve the wants of the people is enough to make the great Al Raschid turn Haroun in his grave. If not...

If I could have a thousand years⁠—just one little thousand years⁠—more of life, I might, in that time, draw near enough to true Romance to touch the hem of her robe. Up from ships men come, and from w...

The (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment-House is not an apartment-house. It is composed of two old-fashioned, brownstone-front residences welded into one. The parlor floor of one side is gay with the wr...

These are the directions for finding the office of Carteret & Carteret, Mill Supplies and Leather Belting: You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line, the Bread Line, and the...

This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer Andador which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leavi...

“Don’t you ever have a desire to go back to the land of derby hats and starched collars?” I asked him. “You seem to be a handy man and a man of action,” I continued, “and I am sure I could find you a ...

“Well, sir,” Trotter went on, “we walks the four miles out, through a virgin conservatory of palms and ferns and other roof-garden products, to the president’s summer White House. It was blue, and rem...

A big black Carib carried me on his back through the surf to the ship’s boat. On the way the purser handed me a letter that he had brought for me at the last moment from the post-office in Aguas Fresc...

Finch keeps a hats-cleaned-by-electricity-while-you-wait establishment, nine feet by twelve, in Third Avenue. Once a customer, you are always his. I do not know his secret process, but every four days...

The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave with unusual animation. The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Catskills that had strayed down to the river’s edge, and, not having ...

Where to go for wisdom has become a question of serious import. The ancients are discredited; Plato is boilerplate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is reeling; Aesop has been copyrighted by In...

Where to go for wisdom has become a question of serious import. The ancients are discredited; Plato is boilerplate; Aristotle is tottering; Marcus Aurelius is reeling; Aesop has been copyrighted by In...

Once upon a time I found a ten-cent magazine lying on a bench in a little city park. Anyhow, that was the amount he asked me for when I sat on the bench next to him. He was a musty, dingy, and tattere...

One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh⁠—well, I had to go there on business. My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies ...

One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh⁠—well, I had to go there on business. My chair-car was profitably well filled with people of the kind one usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies ...

“Say,” said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with the toe of his right shoe, “did you ever read one of these bestsellers? I mean the kind where the hero is an American swell⁠—sometimes even from Ch...

“Well, John,” said I, “I haven’t read a bestseller in a long time. Maybe I’ve had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?” “B...

“Coketown!” droned the porter, making his way through the slowing car. Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely promptness of an old traveller. “I married her a year ago,” said John. “I ...

To avoid having this book hurled into corner of the room by the suspicious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper story. You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor...

I have always maintained, and asserted time to time, that woman is no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself...

Considering men in relation to money, there are three kinds whom I dislike: men who have more money than they can spend; men who have more money than they do spend; and men who spend more money than t...

Let the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the Non Sequitur Limited, if it will; first you must take your seat in the observation car “Raison d’Être” for one moment. It is for no longer than...

Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States that are “story cities”⁠—New York, of course, New Orleans, and, best o...

I am not without claim to distinction. Although I still stick to suspenders⁠—which, happily, reciprocate⁠—I am negatively egregious. I have never, for instance, seen a professional baseball game, neve...

I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more overrated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons. Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an ...

So I went to a doctor. “How long has it been since you took any alcohol into your system?” he asked. Turning my head sidewise, I answered, “Oh, quite awhile.” He was a young doctor, somewhere between ...

When I used to sell hardware in the West, I often “made” a little town called Saltillo, in Colorado. I was always certain of securing a small or a large order from Simon Bell, who kept a general store...

Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little children is the snow. To men, it is something like a crucible in which their world melts into a white star ten million miles away. The man...

I found myself in Texas recently, revisiting old places and vistas. At a sheep ranch where I had sojourned many years ago, I stopped for a week. And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged into the bu...

Now, a Christmas story should be one. For a good many years the ingenious writers have been putting forth tales for the holiday numbers that employed every subtle, evasive, indirect and strategic sche...

I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men. Singly, they are my encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers. But now and then it happens that all of them will pitch upon the ...

The drug clerk looks sharply at the white face half concealed by the high-turned overcoat collar. “I would rather not supply you,” he said doubtfully. “I sold you a dozen morphine tablets less than an...

Murray dreamed a dream. Both psychology and science grope when they would explain to us the strange adventures of our immaterial selves when wandering in the realm of “Death’s twin brother, Sleep.” Th...

An estate famous in Texas legal history. It took many, many years for adjustment and a large part of the property was, of course, consumed as expenses of litigation. ↩ The methods of the Rev. Sam Jone...