Karl May - "My Life and My Efforts"

Charlotte M Yonge - "John Keble's Parishes"

John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1587"

J. L. Cherry - "Life and Remains of John Clare"

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: Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories

K >> Kathleen Norris >> Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories




"What WAS her wedding dress?"

Instantly roused, the guest raised bright, pleased eyes.

"The ladies' question, Warriner," said he. "It was silk, my dear,
her first silk gown. Yellowish, or brownish, it was. And she had one
of those little ruffled capes the ladies used to wear. And a little
bonnet--"

"A BONNET!"

"A bonnet she had trimmed herself. I remember watching her, when we
were engaged, making that trimming. You don't see it any more, but
that year all the girls were making it. They made little bunches of
grapes out of dried peas covered with chamois skin--"

"Oh, not really!" ejaculated Anne.

"Indeed, they did. Then they covered their bonnets with them, and
with leaves cut out of the chamois skin. They were charming, too. My
wife wore that bonnet a long time. She trimmed it over and over." He
sighed, but there was a shade of longing as well as pity in his
eyes. "We were young," he said thoughtfully; "I was but twenty-five;
we had our hard times. The babies came pretty fast. Rose wasn't very
strong. I worked too hard, got broken down a little, and expenses
went right on, you know--"

"You bet I know!" Jim said, with his pleasant laugh, and a glance
for Anne.

"Well," said Charles Rideout, looking keenly from one to the other,
"thank God for it, you young people! It never comes back! The days
when you shoulder your troubles cheerfully together,--they come to
their end! And they are"--he shook his head--"they are very
wonderful to look back to! I remember a certain day," he went on
reminiscently, "when we had paid the last of the doctor's bills, and
Rose met me down town for a little celebration. We had had five or
six years of pretty hard sailing then. We bought her new gloves that
day, I remember, and--shoes, I think it was, and I got a hat, and a
book I'd been wanting. We went to a little French restaurant to
dinner, with all our bundles. And that, that, my dear,--"he said,
smiling at Anne,--"seemed to be the turning point. We got into the
country next year, picked out a little house. And then, the rest of
it all followed; we had two maids, a surrey, I was put into the
superintendent's place--" a sweep of the fine hand dismissed the
details. "No man and wife, who do what we did," said he, gravely,
"who live modestly, and work hard, and love each other and their
children, can FAIL. That's one of the blessed things of life."

Jim cleared his throat, but did not speak. Anne was frankly unable
to speak.

"And now I mustn't keep these children out of bed any longer," said
the older man. "This has been a--a lovely afternoon for me. I wish
Mrs. Rideout had been with me." He stood up. "Shall I give you this
little fellow, Mrs. Warriner?"

"We'll put the babies down," said Jim, rising, too, "and then,
perhaps, you'd like to look about the house, Mr. Rideout?"

"But I know how a lady feels about having her house inspected--"
hesitated the caller, with his bright, fatherly look for Anne.

"Oh, please do!" she urged them.

So the gas was lighted, and they all went into the bedroom, where
Anne tucked the children into their cribs. She stayed there while
the others went on their tour of inspection, patting her son's
small, warm body in the darkness, and listening with a smile to the
visitor's cheerful comments in kitchen and hallway, and Jim's
answering laugh.

When she came blinking out into the lighted dining-room, the men
were upstairs, and Helma, to Anne's astonishment, was showing in
another caller,--and another Charles Rideout, as Anne's puzzled
glance at the card in her hand, assured her. This was a tall young
man, a little dishevelled, in a big storm coat, and with dark rings
about his eyes.

"I beg your pardon, madam," said he, abruptly, "but was my father,
Mr. Charles Rideout, here this afternoon?"

"Why, he's upstairs with my husband now!" Anne said, strangely
disquieted by the young man's manner.

"Thank God!" said the newcomer, briefly. And he wiped his forehead
with his handkerchief, and drew a deep short breath.

"He--I must apologize to you for breaking in upon you this way,"
said young Rideout, "but he came out in the car this afternoon, and
we didn't know where he had gone. He made the chauffeur wait at the
corner at the bottom of the hill, and the fool man waited an hour
before it occurred to him to telephone me at the house. I came at
once."

"He's been here all that time," Anne said. "He's all right. Your
mother and father used to live here, you know, years ago. In this
same house."

"Yes, I know we did. I think I was born here," said Charles Rideout,
Junior. "I had a sort of feeling that he had come here, as soon as
Bates telephoned. Dear old dad! He and mother have told us about
this place a hundred times! They were talking about it for a couple
of hours a few nights ago." He looked about the room as his father
had done. "They were very happy here. There--" he smiled a little
bashfully at Anne--"there never was a pair of lovers like mother and
dad!" he said. Then he cleared his throat. "Did my father tell you--?"
he began, and stopped.

"No," Anne said, troubled. He had told them a great deal, but not--
she felt sure--not this, whatever it was.

"That's why we worried about him," said his son, his honest,
distressed eyes meeting hers. "You see--you see--we're in trouble at
the house--my mother--my mother left us, last night--"

"Dead?" whispered Anne.

"She's been ill a good while," said the young man, "but we thought--
She's been so ill before! A day or two ago the rest of us knew it,
and we wired for my married sister, but we couldn't get dad to
realize it. He never left her, and he's not been eating, and he'd
tell all the doctors what serious sicknesses she'd gotten over
before--" And with a suddenly shaking lip and filling eyes, he
turned his back on Anne, and went to the window.

"Ah!" said Anne, pitifully. And for a full moment there was silence.

Then Charles Rideout, the younger, came back to her, pushing his
handkerchief into his coat pocket; and with a restored self-control.

"Too bad to bother you with our troubles," he said, with a little
smile like his father's. "To us, of course, it seems like the end of
the world, but I am sorry to distress YOU! Dad just doesn't seem to
grasp it, he hasn't been excited, you know, but he doesn't seem to
understand. I don't know that any of us do!" he finished simply.

"Here they are!" Anne said warningly, as the two other men came down
the stairs.

"Hello, Dad!" said young Rideout, easily and cheerfully, "I came to
bring you home!"

"This is MY boy, Mrs. Warriner," said his father; "you see he's
turned the tables, and is looking after me! I'm glad you came,
Charley. I've been telling your good husband, Mrs. Warriner," he
said, in a lower tone, "that we--that I--"

"Yes, I know!" Anne said, with her ready tenderness, and a little
gasp like a child's.

"So you will realize what impulse brought me here to-day," the older
man went on; "I was talking to my wife of this house only a day or
two ago." His voice had become almost inaudible, and the three young
people knew he had forgotten them. "Only a day or two ago," he
repeated musingly. And then, to his son, he added wistfully, "I
don't seem to get it through my head, my boy. For a while to-day, I
forgot--I forgot. The heart--" he said, with his little old-world
touch of dignity--"the heart does not learn things as quickly as the
mind, Mrs. Warriner."

Anne had found something wistful and appealing in his smile before,
now it seemed to her heartbreaking. She nodded, without speaking.

"Dear old Dad," said Charles Rideout, affectionately. "You are tired
out. You've been doing too much, sir, you want sleep and rest."

"Surely--surely," said his father, a little heavily. Father and son
shook hands with Jim and Anne, and the older man said gravely, "God
bless you both!" as he and his son went down the wet path, in the
shaft of light from the hall door. At the gate the boy put his arm
tenderly about his father's shoulders.

"Oh, Anne, Anne," said her husband as she clung to him when the door
was shut, "I couldn't live one day without YOU, my dearest! But
don't--don't cry. Don't let it make you blue,--he HAD his happiness,
you know,--he has his children left!"

Anne tightened her arms about his neck.

"I am crying a little for sorrow, Jim, dearest!" she sobbed, burying
her face in his shoulder. "But I believe it is mostly--mostly for
joy and gratitude, Jim!"






THE TIDE-MARSH

"What are you going to wear to-night in case you CAN go, Mary Bell?"
said Ellen Brewster in her lowest tones.

"Come upstairs and I'll show you," said Mary Bell Barber, glancing,
as they tiptoed out of the room, toward the kitchen's sunny big west
window, where the invalid mother lay in uneasy slumber.

"My new white looks grand," said Ellen on the stairs. "I made it
empire."

Mary Bell said nothing. She opened the door of her spacious bare
bedroom, where tree shadows lay like a pattern on the faded carpet,
and the sinking sun found worn places in the clean white curtains.
On the bed lay a little ruffled pink gown, a petticoat foamy with
lace, white stockings, and white slippers. Mary Bell caught up the
gown and held the shoulders against her own, regarding the older
girl meanwhile with innocent, exultant eyes. Ellen was impressed.

"Well, for pity's sake--if you haven't done wonders with that
dress!" she ejaculated admiringly. "What on earth did you do to it?"

"Well--first I thought it was too far gone," confessed Mary Bell,
laying it down tenderly, "and I wished I hadn't been in such a hurry
to get my new hat. But I ripped it all up and washed it, and I took
these little roses off my year-before-last hat, and got a new
pattern,--and I tell you I WORKED! Wait until you see it on! I just
finished pressing it this afternoon."

"Oh, say--I hope you can go now, after all this!" said Ellen,
earnestly.

The other girl's face clouded.

"I'll never get over it if I don't!" she said. "It seems to me I
never wanted to go anywhere so much in all my life! But some one's
got to stay with mama."

"I'd go crazy,--not KNOWING!" said Ellen. "Who are you going to
ask?"

"There it is!" said Mary Bell. "Until yesterday I thought, of
course, Gran'ma Scott would come. Then Mary died, and she went up to
Dayne. So I went over and asked Bernie; her baby isn't but three
weeks old, you know, and I thought she might bring it over here.
Mama would love to have it! But late last night Tom came over, and
he said Bernie was so crazy to go, they were going to take the baby
along!"

"You poor thing!" said the sympathetic listener.

"I was nearly crazy!" said Mary Bell, crimping a pink ruffle with
careful finger-tips. "I was working on this when he came, and after
he'd gone I crumpled it all up and cried all over it! Well, I guess
I didn't sleep much, and finally, I got up early, and wrote a letter
to Aunt Matty, in Sacramento, and I ran over to Dinwoodie's with it
this morning, and asked Lew if he was going up there to-day. He said
he was, and he took the note for Aunt Mat. I told her about the
dance, and that every one was going, and asked her to come back with
Lew. He said he'd see her first thing!"

"Oh, she will!" said Ellen, confidently. "But, say, Mary Bell, why
don't you walk over to the hotel with me now and ask Johnnie if
she'll stay if your aunt doesn't come? I don't believe she and Walt
are going."

"They mightn't want to leave the hotel on account of drummers on the
night train," said Mary Bell, dubiously. "And that's the very time
mama gets most scared. She's always afraid there are boes on the
train."

"Boes!" said Ellen, scornfully, "what could a bo do!"

"Well, I WILL go over and talk to Johnnie," said Mary Bell, with
sudden hope. "I'm going to get all ready except my dress, in case
Aunt Mat comes," she confided eagerly, when she had kissed the
drowsy mother, and they were on their way.

"Say, did you know that Jim Carr is going to-night with Carrie
Parmalee?" said Ellen, significantly, as the girls crossed the
clean, bare dooryard, under the blossoming locust trees.

Mary Bell's heart grew cold,--sank. She had hoped, if she DID go,
that some chance might make her escort no other than Jim Carr.

"It'll make me sick if she gets him," said Ellen, frankly. Although
engaged herself, she felt an unabated interest in the love-affairs
about her.

"Is he going to drive her over?" asked Mary Bell, clearing her
throat.

"No, thank the Lord for that!" said Ellen, piously. "No. It's all
Mrs. Parmalee's doing, anyway! His horse is lame, and I guess she
thought it was a good chance! He'll drive over there with Gus and
mama and papa and Sadie and Mar'gret; and I guess he'll get enough
of 'em, too!"

Mary Bell breathed again. He hadn't asked Carrie, anyway. And if
she, Mary Bell, really went to the dance, and the pink frock looked
well, and Jim Carr saw all the other boys crowding about her for
dances--

The rosy dream brought them to the steps of the American Palace
Hotel, for Deaneville was only a village, and a brisk walker might
have circled it in twenty minutes. The hideous brown hotel, with its
long porches, was the largest building in the place, except for hay
barns, and fruit storehouses. Three or four saloons, a "social
hall," the "general store," and the smithy, formed the main street,
and diverging from it scattered the wide shady lanes that led to old
homesteads and orchards.

"Johnnie," Walt Larabee's little black-eyed manager and wife, and
the most beloved of Deaneville matrons, was in the bare, odorous
hallway. She was clad in faded blue denim overalls, and a floating
transparent kimono of some cheap stuff. Her coal-black hair was
rigidly puffed and pinned, and ornamented with two coquettish red
roses, and her thin cheeks were rouged.

"Well, say--don't you girls think you're the whole thing!" said the
lady, blithely. "Not for a minute! Walt and me are going to this
dance, too!"

She waved toward them one of the slippers she was cleaning.

"Walt said somethin' about it yes'day," continued Mrs. Larabee, with
relish, "but I said no; no twelve-mile drive for me, with a young
baby! But some folks we know came down on the morning train--you
girls have heard me speak of Ed and Lizzie Purdy?"

"Oh, yes!" said Mary Bell, sick with one more disappointment.

"Well," pursued Johnnie, "they had dinner here, and come t' talk it
over, Lizzie was wild to go, and Ed got Walt all worked up, and
nothing would do but we must get out our old carryall, and take
their Thelma and my Maxine along! Well, LAUGH--we were like a lot of
kids! I'm crazy to dance just once in Pitcher's barn. We're going up
early, and have our supper up there."

"We're going to do that, too," said Ellen, with pleasant
anticipation. "Ma and I always help set tables, and so on! It's lots
of fun!"

Mary Bell's face grew sober as she listened. It WOULD be fun to be
one of the gay party in the big barn, in the twilight, and to have
her share of the unpacking and arranging, and the excitement of
arriving wagons and groups. The great supper of cold chicken and
boiled eggs and fruit and pickles, the fifty varieties of cake,
would be spread downstairs; and upstairs the musicians would be
tuning their instruments as early as seven o'clock, and the eager
boys and girls trying their steps, and changing cards. And then
there would be feasting and laughing and talking, and, above all,
dancing until dawn!

"Beg pardon, Johnnie?" she stammered.

"Well, looks like some one round here is in love, or something!"
said Johnnie, freshly. "I never had it that bad, did you, Ellen?
Ellen's been telling me how you're fixed, Mary Bell," she went on
with deep concern, "and I was suggestin' that you run over to the
general store, and ask Mis' Rowe--or I should say, Mis' Bates," she
corrected herself with a grin, and the girls laughed--"if she won't
sleep at your house tonight. Chess'll tend store. It'll be something
fierce if you don't go, Mary Bell, so you run along and ask the
bride!" laughed Johnnie.

"I believe I would," approved Ellen, and the girls accordingly
crossed the grassy, uneven street to the store.

An immense gray-haired woman was in the doorway.

"Well, is it ribbon or stockings, or what?" said she, smiling. "The
place has gone crazy! There ain't going to be a soul here but me to-
night."

Mary Bell was silent. Ellen spoke.

"Chess ain't going, is he?" she asked.

The old woman shook with laughter.

"Chess ain't nothing but a regular kid," she said. "He was dying to
go, but he knew I couldn't, and he never said a word. Finally, my
boy Tom and his wife, and Len and Josie and the children, they all
drove by on their way to Pitcher's; and Len--he's a good deal
older'n Chess, you know--he says to me, 'You'd oughter leave Chess
come along with the rest of us, ma; jest because he's married ain't
no reason he's forgot how to dance!' Well, I burst right out
laughing, and I says, 'Why didn't he say he wanted to go?' and Chess
run upstairs for his other suit, and off they all went!"

There was nothing for it, then, but to wait for Lew Dinwoodie and
the news from Aunt Mat.

Mary Bell walked slowly back through the fragrant lanes, passed now
and then by a surrey loaded with joyous passengers already bound for
Pitcher's barn. She was at her own gate, when a voice calling her
whisked her about as if by magic.

"Hello, Mary Bell!" said Jim Carr, joining her. But she looked so
pretty in her blue cotton dress, with the yellow level of a field of
mustard-tops behind her, and beyond that the windbreak of gold-
tipped eucalyptus trees, that he went on almost confusedly, "You--
you look terribly pretty in that dress! Is that what you're going to
wear?"

"This!" laughed Mary Bell. And she raised her dancing eyes, to grow
a little confused in her turn. Nature, obedient to whose law
blossoms were whitening the fruit trees, wheat pricking through the
damp earth, robins mating in the orchards, had laid the first thread
of her great bond upon these two. They smiled silently at each
other.

"I'm not even sure I'm going!" said Mary Bell, ruefully.

The sudden look of concern in his face went straight to her heart.
Jim Carr really cared, then, that she couldn't go! Big, clever,
kindly Jim Carr, who was superintendent at the power-house, and a
comparative newcomer in Deaneville, was an important personage.

"Not going!" said Jim, blankly. "Oh, say--why not!"

Mary Bell explained. But Jim was encouraging.

"Why, of course your aunt will come!" he assured her sturdily.
"She'll know what it means to you. You'll go up with the Dickeys,
won't you? I'm going up early, with the Parmalees, but I'll look out
for you! I've got to hunt up my kid brother now; he's got to sleep
at Montgomery's to-night. I don't want him alone at the hotel, if
Johnnie isn't there. If you happen to see him, will you tell him?"

"All right," said Mary Bell. And her spirits were sufficiently
braced by his encouragement to enable her to call cheerfully after
him, "See you later, Jim!"

"See you later!" he shouted back, and Mary Bell went back to the
kitchen with a lightened heart. Aunt Mat wouldn't--COULDN'T--fail
her!

She carried a carefully prepared tray in to her mother at five
o'clock, and sat beside her while the invalid slowly finished her
milk-toast and tea, and the cookies and jelly Mary Bell was famous
for. The girl chatted cheerfully.

"You don't feel very badly about the dance, do you, deary?" said
Mrs. Barber, as the gentle young hands settled her comfortably for
the night.

"Not a speck!" answered Mary Bell, bravely, as she kissed her.

"Bernie and Johnnie going--married women!" said the old lady,
sleepily. "I never heard such nonsense! Don't you go out of call,
will you, dear?"

Mary Bell was eating her own supper, ten minutes later, when the
train whistled, and she ran, breathless, to the road, to meet Lew
Dinwoodie.

"What did Aunt Matty say, Lew?" called Mary Bell, peering behind him
into the closed surrey, for a glimpse of the old lady.

The man stared at her with a falling jaw.

"Well, I guess I owe you one for this, Mary Bell!" he stammered.
"I'll eat my shirt if I thought of your note again!"

It was too much. Mary Bell began to dislodge little particles of
dried mud carefully from the wheel, her eyes swimming, her breast
rising.

"Right in her part of town, too!" pursued the contrite messenger;
"but, as I say--"

Mary Bell did not hear him. After a while he was gone, and she was
sitting on the steps, hopeless, dispirited, tired. She sombrely
watched the departing surreys and phaetons. "I could have gone with
them--or with them!" she would think, when there was an empty seat.

The Parmalees went by; two carriage loads. Jim Carr was in the
phaeton with Carrie at his side. All the others were in the surrey.

"I'm keeping 'em where I can have an eye on 'em!" Mrs. Parmalee
called out, pointing to the phaeton.

Everybody waved, and Mary Bell waved back. But when they were gone,
she dropped her head on her arms.

Dusk came; the village was very still. A train thundered by, and
Potter's windmill creaked and splashed,--creaked and splashed. A
cow-bell clanked in the lane, and Mary Bell looked up to see the
Dickeys' cow dawdle by, her nose sniffing idly at the clover, her
downy great bag leaving a trail of foam on the fresh grass. From up
the road came the faint approaching rattle of wheels.

Wheels?

The girl looked toward the sound curiously. Who drove so recklessly?
She noticed a bank of low clouds in the east, and felt a puff of
cool air on her cheek.

"It feels like rain!" she said, watching the wagon as it came near.
"That's Henderson's mare, and that's their wooden-legged hired man!
Why, what is it?"

The last words were cried aloud, for the galloping old horse and
driver were at the gate now, and eyes less sharp than Mary Bell's
would have detected something wrong.

"What IS it?" she cried again, at the gate. The man pulled up
sharply.

"Say, ain't there a man here, nowhere?" he demanded abruptly. "I've
been banging at every house along the way; ain't there a soul in the
place?"

"Dance!" explained Mary Bell. "The Ladies' Improvement Society in
Pitcher's new barn. Why! what is it? Mrs. Henderson sick?"

"No, ma'am!" said the old fellow, "but things is pretty serious down
there!" He jerked his hand over his shoulder. "There's some little
fellers,--four or five of 'em!--seems they took a boat to-day, to go
ducking, and they're lost in the tide-marsh! My God--an' I never
thought of the dance!" He gave a despairing glance at the quiet
street. "I come here to get twenty men--or thirty--for the search!"
he said heavily. "I don't know what to do, now!"

Mary Bell had turned very white.

"There isn't a soul here, Stumpy!" she said, terrified eyes on his
face. "There isn't a man in town! What CAN we do!--Say!" she cried
suddenly, springing to the seat, "drive me over to Mrs. Rowe's;
she's married to Chess Bates, you know, at the store. Go on, Stumpy!
What boys are they?"

"I know the Turner boys and the Dickey boy is three of 'em," said
the old man, "and Henderson's own boy, Davy--poor leetle feller!--
and Buddy Hopper, and the Adams boy. They had a couple of guns, and
they was all in this boat of Hopper's, poking round the marsh, and
it began to look like rain, and got dark. Well, she was shipping a
little water, and Hopper and Adams wanted to tie her to the edge and
walk up over the marsh, but the other fellers wanted to go on round
the point. So Adams and Hopper left 'em, and come over the marsh,
and walked to the point, but she wasn't there. Well, they waited and
hallooed, but bimeby they got scared, and come flying up to
Henderson's, and Henderson and me--there ain't another man there to-
night!--we run down to the marsh, and yelled, but us two couldn't do
nothing! Tide's due at eleven, and it's going to rain, so I left
him, and come in for some men. Henderson's just about crazy! They
lost a boy in that tide-marsh a while back."

"It's too awful,--it's just murder to let 'em go there!" said Mary
Bell, heart-sick. For no dragon of old ever claimed his prey more
regularly than did the terrible pools and quicksands of the great
marsh.

Mrs. Bates was practical. Her old face blanched, but she began to
plan instantly.

"Don't cry, Mary Bell!" said she; "this thing is in God's hands. He
can save the poor little fellers jest as easy with a one-legged man
as he could with a hundred hands. You drive over to the depot,
Stumpy, and tell the operator to plug away at Barville until he gets
some one to take a message to Pitcher's barn. It'll be a good three
hours before they even git this far," she continued doubtfully, as
the old man eagerly rattled away, "and then they've got to get down
to Henderson's; but it may be an all-night search! Now, lemme see
who else we can git. Deefy, over to the saloon, wouldn't be no good.
But there's Adams's Chinee boy, he's a good strong feller; you stop
for him, and git Gran'pa Barry, too; he's home to-night!"

"Look here, Mrs. Bates," said Mary Bell, "shall I go?"