Arthur Conan Doyle - "Rodney Stone"

P. G. Wodehouse - "A Man of Means"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Life of John of Barneveld, 1609 14"

P. G. Wodehouse - "Indiscretions of Archie"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Love Me Little, Love Me Long

C >> Charles Reade >> Love Me Little, Love Me Long




"'What was the ship's name, mate?'

"'The _Connemara_,' says he.

"'And what is your name?' So he told him, 'Jem Green.'

"The other brings a great mutton fist down on the table, and makes all
the glasses dance. 'You stay at your moorings till I come back,' says
he. 'I have got something belonging to you, Jem Green,' and he sheered
off. The others lay to and passed the grog. Presently the long one
comes back with a harpoon steel in his hand; there was
_Connemara_ stamped on it, and also 'James Green' graved with a
knife. 'Is that yours?' 'Is my hand mine?' says Jem; 'but wasn't there
a broken shaft to it!"

"'There was,' says the Yankee harpooner; 'I cut it out.'

"'Well!' says Jem, 'that is the harpoon we were fast by to this very
whale. Where did you kill her?'

"'In the Greenland seas.' And he whips out his private log. 'Here you
are,' says he; 'March 25, 1820, latitude so and so, killed a right
whale; lost half the blubber, owing to the carcass sinking; cut an
English harpoon out of her.'

"'Avast there, mate!' cried Jem, and he whips, out _his_ log;
'overhaul that.' The other harpooner overhauled it. 'Mates, look,
here,' says he; 'I reckon we hain't fathomed the critters yet. The
Britisher struck her in the Pacific on the 5th of March, and we killed
her off Greenland on the 25th, five thousand miles of water by the
lowest reckoning.' By this time there were a dozen heads jammed
together, like bees swarming, over the two logs. 'She got a wound in
the Pacific! "Hallo!" says she; "this is no sea for a lady to live
in;" so she up helm, and right away across the pole into the Atlantic,
and met her death.'"

"Your story has an interest you little suspect, young gentleman. If
this is true, the northwest passage is proved."

"That has been proved a hundred times, sir, and in a hundred ways; the
only riddle is to find it. The man that tells you there is not a
northwest passage is no sailor, and the fish that can't find it is not
a whale; for there is not a young suckling no bigger than this room
that does not know that passage as well as a mid on his first voyage
knows the way to the mizzen-top through lubber's hole. How tired you
must be of whales, ladies?"

"Oh no."

"Kill us one more, David. I love bloodshed--to hear of."

"Well, now, I don't think that can be Miss Fountain's taste, to look
at her."

Then David. told them how he had fallen in with a sperm whale, dead of
disease, floating as high as a frigate; how, with a very light breeze,
the skipper had crept down toward her; how, at half a mile distance
the stench of her was severe, but, as they neared her, awful; then so
intolerable that the skipper gave the crew leave to go below and close
the lee ports. So there were but two men left on the brig's deck, and
a ship's company that a hurricane would not have driven from their
duty skulked before a foul smell; but such a smell! a smell that
struck a chill and a loathing to the heart, and soul, and marrow-bone;
a smell like the gases in a foul mine; "it would have suffocated us in
a few moments if we had been shut up along with it." Then he told how
the skipper and he stuffed their noses and ears with cotton steeped in
aromatic vinegar, and their mouths with pig-tail (by which, as it
subsequently appeared, Lucy understood pork or bacon in some form
unknown to her narrow experience), and lighted short pipes, and
breached the brig upon the putrescent monster, and grappled to it, and
then the skipper jumped on it, a basket slung to his back, and a rope
fast under his shoulders in case of accident, and drove his spade in
behind the whale's side-fin."

"His spade, Mr. Dodd?"

"His whale-spade; it is as sharp as a razor;" and how the skipper dug
a hole in the whale as big as a well and four feet deep, and, after a
long search, gave a shout of triumph, and picked out some stuff that
looked like Gloucester cheese; and, when he had nearly filled his
basket with this stuff, he slacked the grappling-iron, and David
hauled him on board, and the carcass dropped astern, and the captain
sang out for rum, and drank a small tumbler neat, and would have
fainted away, spite of his precautions, but for the rum, and how a
heavenly perfume was now on deck fighting with that horrid odor; and
how the crew smelled it, and crept timidly up one by one, and how "the
Glo'ster cheese was a great favorite of yours, ladies. It was the king
of perfumes--amber-gas; there is some of it in all your richest
scents; and the knowing skipper had made a hundred guineas in the turn
of the hand. So knowledge is wealth, you see, and the sweet can be got
out of the sour by such as study nature."

"Don't preach, David, especially after just telling a fib. A hundred
guineas!"

"I am wrong,"' said David.

"Very wrong, indeed."

"There were eight pounds; and he sold it at a guinea the ounce to a
wholesale chemist, so that looks to me like 128 pounds."

Then David left the whales, and encouraged by bright eyes and winning
smiles, and warm questions, sang higher strains.

Ships in dire distress at sea, yet saved by God's mercy, and the cool,
invincible courage of captain and crew--great ships run ashore--the
waves breaking them up--the rigging black with the despairing crew,
eying the watery death that tumbled and gaped and roared for them
below; and then little shore boats, manned by daring hearts, launched
into the surf, and going out to the great ship and her peril, risking
more life for the chance of saving life. And he did not present the
bare skeletons of daring acts; those grand morgues, the journals, do
that. There lie the dry bones of giant epics waiting Genius's hand to
make them live. He gave them not only the broad outward facts--the
bones; but those smaller touches that are the body and soul of a
story, true or false, wanting which the deeds of heroes sound an
almanac; above all, he gave them glimpses, not only of what men acted,
but what they felt: what passed in the hearts of men perishing at sea,
in sight of land, houses, fires on the hearth, and outstretched hands,
and in the hearts of the heroes that ran their boats into the surf and
Death's maw to save them, and of the lookers on, admiring, fearing,
shivering, glowing, and of the women that sobbed and prayed ashore
with their backs to the sea, just able to risk lover, husband, and son
for the honor of manhood and the love of Christ, but not able to look
on at their own flesh and blood diving so deep, and lost so long in
cockle-shells between the hills of waves.

Such great acts, great feelings, great perils, and the gushes that
crowned all of holy triumph when the boats came in with the dripping
and saved, and man for a moment looked greater than the sea and the
wind and death, this seaman poured hot from his own manly heart into
quick and womanly bosoms, that heaved visibly, and glowed with
admiring sympathy, and fluttered with gentle fear.

And after a while, though not at first, David's yarns began to contain
a double interest to one of the party--Miss Fountain. Those who live
to please get to read character at sight, and David, though in these
more noble histories he scarcely named himself, was laying a
full-length picture of his own mind bare to these keen feminine eyes.
As for old Fountain, he was charmed, and saw nothing more than David
showed him outright. But the women sat flashing secret intelligence
backward and forward from eye to eye after the manner of their sex.

"Do you see?" said one lady's eyes.

"Yes," replied the other. "He was concerned in this feat, though he
does not say so."

"Oh, you agree with me? Then we are right," replied the first pair of
speakers.

"There again: look; this sailor, whom he describes as a fellow that
happened to be ashore at that foreign port with nothing better to do,
and who went out with the English smugglers to save the brig when the
natives durst not launch a boat?"

"Himself! not a doubt of it."

And so the blue and hazel lightning went dancing to and fro; ay, even
when the tale took a sorrowful turn, and dimmed these bright orbs of
intelligence, the lightning struggled through the dew, and David was
read and discussed by gleams, and glances, and flashes, without a word
spoken. And he, all unconscious that he sat between a pair of
telegraphs, and heating more and more under his great recollections
and his hearers' sympathy, inthralled them with his tuneful voice, his
glowing face, his lion eye, and his breathing, burning histories.
Heart to dare and do, yet heart to feel, and brain and tongue to tell
a deed well, are rare allies, yet here they met.

He mastered his hearers, and played on their breasts as David played
the harp, and perhaps Achilles; Bochsa never, nor any of his tribe. He
made the old man forget his genealogies, his small ambition, his gout,
his years, and be a boy again an hour or two in thought, and blood,
and early fire. He made the women's bosoms pant and swell, and seem to
aspire to be the nests and cradles of heroes, and their eyes flash and
glisten, and their cheeks flush and grow pale by turns; and the four
little papered walls that confined them seemed to fall without noise,
and they were away in thought out of a carpeted temple of wax, small
talk, nonentity, and nonentities, away to sea-breezes that they almost
felt in their hair and round their temples as their hearts rose and
fell upon a broad swell of passion, perils, waves, male men,
realities. The spell was at its height, when the sea-wizard's eye fell
on the mantel-piece. Died in a moment his noble ardor: "Why, it is
eight bells," said he, servilely; then, doggedly, "time to turn in."

"Hang that clock!" shouted Mr. Fountain; "I'll have it turned out of
the room."

Said Lucy, with gentle enthusiasm, "It must be beautiful to be a
sailor, and to have seen the real world, and, above all, to be brave
and strong like Mr. ----,. must it not, uncle?" and she looked askant
at David's square shoulders and lion eye, and for the first time in
her life there crossed her an undefined instinct that this gentleman
must be the male of her species.

"As for his courage," said Eve, "that we have only his own word for."

David grinned.

"Not even that," replied Lucy, "for I observed he spoke but little of
himself."

"I did not notice that," said Eve, pertly; "but as for his strength,
he certainly is as strong as a great bear, and as rude. What do you
think? my lord carried me all the way from the top of the green lane
to your house, and I am no feather."

"No, a skein of silk," put in David.

"I asked the gentleman politely to put me down, and he wouldn't, so
then I boxed his ears."

"Oh, how could you?"

"Oh, bless you, he never hits me again; he is too great a coward. And
the great mule carried me all the more--carried me to your very door."

"I almost think--I believe I could guess why he carried you, if you
will not be offended at my assuming the interpreter," said Lucy,
looking at Eve and speaking at David. "You have thin shoes on, Miss
Dodd; now I remember the gravel ends at green lane, and the grass
begins; so, from what we know of Mr. Dodd, perhaps he carried you that
you might not have damp feet."

"Nothing of the kind--yes, it was, though, by his coloring up. La!
David, dear boy!"

"What is a man alongside for but to keep a girl out of mischief?" said
David, bruskly.

"Pray convert all your sex to that view," laughed Lucy.

So now they were going. Then Mr. Fountain thanked David for the
pleasant evening he had given them; then David blushed and stammered.
He had a veneration for old age--another of his superstitions.

Her uncle's lead gave Lucy an opportunity she instantly seized. "Mr.
Dodd, you have taken us into a new world of knowledge; we never were
so interested in our lives." At this pointblank praise David blushed,
and was anything but comfortable, and began to back out of it all with
a curt bow. Then, as the ladies can advance when a man of merit
retreats, Lucy went the length of putting out her hand with a sweet,
grateful smile; so he took it, and, in the ardor of encouraging so
much spirit and modesty, she unconsciously pressed it. On this
delicious pressure, light as it was, he raised his full brown eye, and
gave her such a straightforward look of manly admiration and pleasure
that she blushed faintly and drew back a little in her turn.


"Well, Davy, dear, how do you like the Fountains?"

"Eve, she is a clipper!"

"And the old gentleman?"

"He was very friendly. What do _you_ think of her?"

"She is an out-and-out woman of the world, and very agreeable, as
insincere people generally are. I like her because she was so polite
to you."

"Oh, that is your reading of her, is it?"

The rest of the walk passed almost in silence.


"Uncle, I am not sleepy to-night."

"Who is? that young rascal has set me on fire with his yarns. Who
would have thought that awkward cub had so much in him?"

"Awkward, but not a cub; say rather a black swan; and you know, uncle,
a swan is an awkward thing on land, but when it takes the water it is
glorious, and that man was glorious; but--Da--vid Do--dd."

"I don't know whether he was glorious, but I know he amused me, and
I'll have him to tea three times a week while he lasts."

"Uncle, do you believe such an unfortunate combination of sounds is
his real name?" asked Lucy, gravely.

"Why, who would be mad enough to feign such a name?"

"That is true; but now tell me--if he should ever, think of marrying
with such a name?"

"Then there will be two David Dodd's in the world, Mr. and Mrs."

"I don't think so; he will be merciful, and take her name instead of
she his; he is so good-natured."

"Ordinary sponsors would have been content with Samuel or Nathan; but
no, this one's must, call in 'apt alliteration's artful aid,' and have
the two 'd's.'"

Lucy assented with a smile, and so, being no longer under the spell of
the enthusiast and the male, the genealogist and the fine lady took
the rise out of what Miss Fountain was pleased to call his impossible
title,

Da--vid Dodd.



CHAPTER III.

LUCY was not called on to write any more formal invitations to Mr.
Talboys. Her uncle used merely to say to her: "Talboys dines with us
to-day." She made no remark; she respected her uncle's preference;
besides--the pony! Of these trios Mr. Fountain was the true soul. He
had to blow the coals of conversation right and left. It is very good
of me not to compare him to the Tropic between two frigid zones. At
first he took his nap as usual; for he said to himself: "Now I have
started them they can go on." Besides, he had seen pictures in the
shop windows of an old fellow dozing and then the young ones
"popping."

Dozing off with this idea uppermost, he used to wake with his eyes
shut and his ears wide open; but it was to hear drowsy monosyllables
dropping out at intervals like minute-guns, or to find Lucy gone and
Talboys reading the coals. Then the schemer sighed, and took to strong
coffee soon after dinner, and gave up his nap, and its loss impaired
his temper the rest of the evening.

He indemnified himself for these sleepless dinners by asking David
Dodd and his sister to tea thrice a week on the off-nights; this
joyous pair amused the old gentleman, and he was not the man to deny
himself a pleasure without a powerful motive.

"What, again so soon?" hazarded Lucy, one day that he bade her invite
them. "I hardly know how to word my invitation; I have exhausted the
forms."

"If you say another word, I'll make them come every night. Am I to
have no amusement?" he added, in a deep tone of reproach; "they make
me laugh."

"Ah! I forgot; forgive me."

"Little hypocrite; don't they you too, pray? Why, you are as dull as
ditchwater the other evenings."

"Me, dear, dull with you?"

"Yes, Miss Crocodile, dull with a pattern uncle and his friend--and
your admirer." He watched her to see how she would take this last
word. Catch her taking it at all. "I am never dull with you, dear
uncle," said she; "but a third person, however estimable, is a certain
restraint, and when that person is not very lively--" Here the
explanation came quietly to an untimely end, like those old tunes that
finish in the middle or thereabouts.

"But that is the very thing; what do I ask them for to-night but to
thaw Talboys?"

"To thaw Talboys? he! he!"

Lucy seemed so tickled by this expression that the old gentleman was
sorry he had used it.

"I mean, they will make him laugh." Then, to turn it off, he said
hastily, "And don't forget the fiddle, Lucy."

"Oh, yes, dear, please let me forget that, and then perhaps they may
forget to bring it."

"Why, you pressed him to bring it; I heard you."

"Did I?" said Lucy, ruefully.

"I am sure I thought you were mad after a fiddle, you seconded Eve so
warmly; so that. was only your extravagant politeness after all. I am
glad you are caught. I like a fiddle, so there is no harm done."

Yes, reader, you have hit it. Eve, who openly quizzed her brother, but
secretly adored him, and loved to display all his accomplishments, had
egged on Mr. Fountain to ask David to bring his violin next time. Lucy
had shivered internally. "Now, of all the screeching, whining things
that I dislike, a violin!"--and thus thinking, gushed out, "Oh, pray
do, Mr. Dodd," with a gentle warmth that settled the matter and
imposed on all around.

This evening, then, the Dodds came to tea.

They found Lucy alone in the drawing-room, and Eve engaged her
directly in sprightly conversation, into which they soon drew David,
and, interchanging a secret signal, plied him with a few artful
questions, and--launched him. But the one sketch I gave of his manner
and matter must serve again and again. Were I to retail to the reader
all the droll, the spirited, the exciting things he told his hearers,
there would be no room for my own little story; and we are all so
egotistical! Suffice it to say, the living book of travels was
inexhaustible; his observation and memory were really marvelous, and
his enthusiasm, coupled with his accuracy of detail, had still the
power to inthrall his hearers.

"Mr. Dodd," said Lucy, "now I see why Eastern kings have a
story-teller always about them--a live story-teller. Would not you
have one, Miss Dodd, if you were Queen of Persia?"

"Me? I'd have a couple--one to make me laugh; one miserable."

"One would be enough if his resources were equal to your brother's.
Pray go on, Mr. Dodd. It was madness to interrupt you with small
talk."

David hung his head for a moment, then lifted it with a smile, and
sailed in the spirit into the China seas, and there told them how the
Chinamen used to slip on board his ship and steal with supernatural
dexterity, and the sailors catch them by the tails, which they
observing, came ever with their tails soaped like pigs at a village
feast; and how some foolhardy sailors would venture into the town at
the risk of their lives; and how one day they had to run for it, and
when they got to the shore their boat was stolen, and they had to
'bout ship and fight it out, and one fellow who knew the natives had
loaded the sailors' guns with currant jelly. Make
ready--present--fire! In a moment the troops of the Celestial Empire
smarted, and were spattered with seeming gore, and fled yelling.

Then he told how a poor comrade of his was nabbed and clapped in
prison, and his hands and feet were to be cut off at sunrise; himself
at noon. It was midnight, and strict orders from the quarterdeck had
been issued that no man should leave the ship: what was to be done? It
was a moonlight night. They met, silent as death, between
decks--daren't speak above a whisper, for fear the officers should
hear them. His messmate was crying like a child. One proposed one
thing, one another; but it was all nonsense, and we knew it was, and
at sunrise poor Tom must die.

At last up jumps one fellow, and cries, "Messmates, I've got it; Tom
isn't dead yet."

This was the moment Mr. Fountain and Mr. Talboys chose for coming into
the drawing-room, of course. Mr. Fountain, with a shade of hesitation
and awkwardness, introduced the Dodds to Mr. Talboys: he bowed a
little stiffly, and there was a pause. Eve could not repress a little
movement of nervous impatience. "David is telling us one of his
nonsensical stories, sir," said she to Mr. Fountain, "and it is so
interesting; go on, David."

"Well, but," said David, modestly, "it isn't everybody that likes
these sea-yarns as you do, Eve. No, I'll belay, and let my betters get
a word in now."

"You are more merciful than most story-tellers, sir," said Talboys.

Eve tossed her head and looked at Lucy, who with a word could have the
story go on again. That young lady's face expressed general
complacency, politeness, and _tout m'est egal._ Eve could have
beat her for not taking David's part. "Doubleface!" thought she. She
then devoted herself with the sly determination of her sex to trotting
David out and making him the principal figure in spite of the
new-corner.

But, as fast as she heated him, Talboys cooled him. We are all great
at something or other, small or great. Talboys was a first-rate
freezer. He was one of those men who cannot shine, but can eclipse.
They darken all but a vain man by casting a dark shadow of trite
sentences on each luminary. The vain man insults them directly, and so
gets rid of them.

Talboys kept coming across honest enthusiastic David with little
remarks, each skillfully discordant with the rising sentiment. Was he
droll, Talboys did a bit of polite gravity on him; was he warm in
praise of some gallant action, chill irony trickled on him from T.

His flashes of romance were extinguished by neat little dicta,
embodying sordid and false, but current views of life. The gauze wings
of eloquence, unsteeled by vanity, will not bear this repeated dabbing
with prose glue, so David collapsed and Talboys conquered--"spell"
benumbed "charm." The sea-wizard yielded to the petrifier, and "could
no more," as the poets say. Talboys smiled superior. But, as his art
was a purely destructive one, it ended with its victim; not having an
idea of his own in his skull, the commentator, in silencing his text,
silenced himself and brought the society to a standstill. Eve sat with
flashing eyes; Lucy's twinkled with sly fun: this made Eve angrier.
She tried another tack.

"You asked David to bring his fiddle," said she, sharply, "but I
suppose now--"

"Has he brought it?" asked Mr. Fountain, eagerly.

"Yes, he has; I made him" (with a glance of defiance at Talboys).

Mr. Fountain rang the bell directly and sent for the fiddle. It came.
David took it and tuned it, and made it discourse. Lucy leaned a
little back in her chair, wore her "_tout m'est egal_ face," and
Eve watched her like a cat. First her eyes opened with a mild
astonishment, then her lips parted in a smile; after a while a faint
color came and went, and. her eyes deepened and deepened in color, and
glistened with the dewy light of sensibility.

A fiddle wrought this, or rather genius, in whose hand a jews-harp is
the lyre of Orpheus, a fiddle the harp of David, a chisel a hewer of
heroic forms, a brush or a pen the scepter of souls, and, alas! a nail
a picklock.

Inside every fiddle is a soul, but a coy one. The nine hundred and
ninety-nine never win it. They play rapid tunes, but the soul of
beautiful gayety is not there; slow tunes, very slow ones, wherein the
spirit of whining is mighty, but the sweet soul of pathos is absent;
doleful, not nice and tearful. Then comes the Heaven-born fiddler,*
who can make himself cry. with his own fiddle. David had a touch of
this witchcraft. Though a sound musician and reasonably master of his
instrument, he could not fly in a second up and down it, tickling the
fingerboard and scratching the strings without an atom of tone, as the
mechanical monkeys do that boobies call fine players.

* This is a definition of the Heaven-born fiddler by Pate Bailey, a
gypsy tinker and celestial violinist. Being asked for a test of
proficiency on that instrument, he replied that no man is a fiddler
"till he can gar himsel greet wi a feddle."

"Great Orpheus played so well he moved Old Nick,
But these move nothing but their fiddlestick."*

* See how unjust satire is! Don't they move their finger-nails?

But he could make you laugh and crow with his fiddle, and could make
you jump up, aetat. 60, and snap your fingers at old age and
propriety, and propose a jig to two bishops and one master of the
rolls, and, they declining, pity them without a shade of anger, and
substitute three chairs; then sit unabashed and smiling at the past;
and the next minute he could make you cry, or near it. In a word he
could evoke the soul of that wonderful wooden shell, and bid it
discourse with the souls and hearts of his hearers.

Meantime Lucy Fountain's face would have interested a subtle student
of her sex.

Her sensibility to music was great, and the feeling strains stole into
her nature, and stirred the treasures of the deep to the surface. Eve,
a keen if not a profound observer, was struck by the rising beauty of
this countenance, over which so many moods chased one another. She
said to herself: "Well, David is right, after all; she is a lovely
girl. Her features are nothing out of the way. Her nose is neither one
thing nor the other, but her expression is beautiful. None of your
wooden faces for me. And, dear heart, how her neck rises! La! how her
color comes and goes! Well, I do love the fiddle myself dearly; and
now, if her eyes are not brimming; I could kiss her! La! David," cried
she, bursting the bounds of silence, "that is enough of the tune the
old cow died of; take and play something to keep our hearts up--do."