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The Mystery of Metropolisville

The Mystery of Metropolisville

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Project Gutenberg's The Mystery of Metropolisville, by Edward Eggleston

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Title: The Mystery of Metropolisville

Author: Edward Eggleston

Release Date: April 29, 2004 [EBook #12195]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERY OF METROPOLISVILLE ***

Produced by John Hagerson, Rick Niles, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE MYSTERY OF METROPOLISVILLE

BY EDWARD EGGLESTON
AUTHOR OF "THE HOOGLEE SCHOOL-MASTER," "THE END OF THE WORLD," ETC

1888

TO ONE WHO KNOWS WITH ME A LOVE-STORY, NOW MORE THAN FIFTEEN YEARS IN LENGTH, AND BETTER A HUNDREDFOLD THAN ANY I SHALL EVER BE ABLE TO WRITE, THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED, ON AN ANNIVERSARY.

MARCH 18TH, 1873.

PREFACE.

A novel should be the truest of books. It partakes in a certain sense of the nature of both history and art. It needs to be true to human nature in its permanent and essential qualities, and it should truthfully represent some specific and temporary manifestation of human nature: that is, some form of society. It has been objected that I have copied life too closely, but it seems to me that the work to be done just now, is to represent the forms and spirit of our own life, and thus free ourselves from habitual imitation of that which is foreign. I have wished to make my stories of value as a contribution to the history of civilization in America. If it be urged that this is not the highest function, I reply that it is just now the most necessary function of this kind of literature. Of the value of these stories as works of art, others must judge; but I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I have at least rendered one substantial though humble service to our literature, if I have portrayed correctly certain forms of American life and manners.

BROOKLYN, March, 1873.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE
WORDS BEFOREHAND
CHAPTER I. The Autocrat of the Stage-Coach
CHAPTER II. The Sod Tavern
CHAPTER III. Land and Love
CHAPTER IV. Albert and Katy
CHAPTER V. Corner Lots
CHAPTER VI. Little Katy's Lover
CHAPTER VII. Catching and Getting Caught
CHAPTER VIII. Isabel Marlay
CHAPTER IX. Lovers and Lovers
CHAPTER X. Plausaby, Esq., takes a Fatherly Interest
CHAPTER XI. About Several Things
CHAPTER XII. An Adventure
CHAPTER XIII. A Shelter
CHAPTER XIV. The Inhabitant
CHAPTER XV. An Episode
CHAPTER XVI. The Return
CHAPTER XVII. Sawney and his Old Love
CHAPTER XVIII. A Collision
CHAPTER XIX. Standing Guard in Vain
CHAPTER XX. Sawney and Westcott
CHAPTER XXI. Rowing
CHAPTER XXII. Sailing
CHAPTER XXIII. Sinking
CHAPTER XXIV. Dragging
CHAPTER XXV. Afterwards
CHAPTER XXVI. The Mystery
CHAPTER XXVII. The Arrest
CHAPTER XXVIII. The Tempter
CHAPTER XXIX. The Trial
CHAPTER XXX. The Penitentiary
CHAPTER XXXI. Mr. Lurton
CHAPTER XXXII. A Confession
CHAPTER XXXIII. Death
CHAPTER XXXIV. Mr. Lurton's Courtship
CHAPTER XXXV. Unbarred
CHAPTER XXXVI. Isabel
CHAPTER XXXVII. The Last
WORDS AFTERWARDS

ILLUSTRATIONS BY FRANK BEARD

The Superior Being

Mr. Minorkey and the Fat Gentleman

Plausaby sells Lots

"By George! He! he! he!"

Mrs. Plausaby

The Inhabitant

A Pinch of Snuff

Mrs. Ferret

One Savage Blow full in the Face

"What on Airth's the Matter?"

His Unselfish Love found a Melancholy Recompense

The Editor of "The Windmill"

"Git up and Foller!"

THE MYSTERY OF METROPOLISVILLE.

WORDS BEFOREHAND.

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

CHAPTER I.

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE STAGECOACH.

"Git up!"

No leader of a cavalry charge ever put more authority into his tones than did Whisky Jim, as he drew the lines over his four bay horses in the

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