Wolfville Nights. Alfred Henry Lewis

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       Alfred Henry Lewis

      Wolfville Nights

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664601841

Table of Contents

       NEW YORK CITY,

       MY DEAR STERETT:—

       ALFRED HENRY LEWIS.

       SOME COWBOY FACTS.

       WOLFVILLE NIGHTS

       CHAPTER I. The Dismissal of Silver Phil.

       CHAPTER II. Colonel Sterett's Panther Hunt,

       CHAPTER III. How Faro Nell Dealt Bank.

       CHAPTER IV. How The Raven Died.

       CHAPTER V. The Queerness of Dave Tutt.

       CHAPTER VI. With the Apache's Compliments.

       CHAPTER VII. The Mills of Savage Gods.

       CHAPTER VIII. Tom and Jerry; Wheelers.

       CHAPTER IX. The Influence of Faro Nell.

       CHAPTER X. The Ghost of the Bar-B-8.

       CHAPTER XI. Tucson Jennie's Correction.

       CHAPTER XII. Bill Connors of the Osages.

       CHAPTER XIII. When Tutt first saw Tucson.

       CHAPTER XIV. The Troubles of Dan Boggs.

       CHAPTER XV. Bowlegs and Major Ben.

       CHAPTER XVI. Toad Allen's Elopement.

       CHAPTER XVII. The Clients of Aaron Green.

       CHAPTER XVII. Colonel Sterett Relates Marvels.

       CHAPTER XIX. The Luck of Hardrobe.

       CHAPTER XX. Colonel Coyote Clubbs.

       CHAPTER XXI. Long Ago on the Rio Grande.

       THE END.

      To

      William Greene Sterett

      this volume is

      inscribed.

NEW YORK CITY,

       Table of Contents

      August 1, 1902

MY DEAR STERETT:—

       Table of Contents

      In offering this book to you I might have advantage of the occasion to express my friendship and declare how high I hold you as a journalist and a man. Or I might speak of those years at Washington when in the gallery we worked shoulder to shoulder; I might recall to you the wit of Hannum, or remind you of the darkling Barrett, the mighty Decker, the excellent Cohen, the vivid Brown, the imaginative Miller, the volatile Angus, the epigrammatic Merrick, the quietly satirical Splain, Rouzer the earnest, Boynton the energetic, Carson the eminent, and Dunnell, famous for a bitter, frank integrity. I might remember that day when the gifted Fanciulli, with no more delicate inspiration than crackers, onions, and cheese, and no more splendid conservatory than Shoemaker's, wrote, played and consecrated to you his famous "Lone Star March" wherewith he so disquieted the public present of the next concert in the White House grounds. Or I might hark back to the campaign of '92, when together we struggled against national politics as evinced in the city of New York; I might repaint that election night when, with one hundred thousand whirling dervishes of democracy in Madison Square, dancing dances, and singing songs of victory, we undertook through the hubbub to send from the "Twenty-third street telegraph office" half-hourly bulletins to our papers in the West; how you, accompanied of the dignified Richard Bright, went often to the Fifth Avenue Hotel; and how at last you dictated your bulletins—a sort of triumphant blank verse, they were—as Homeric of spirit as lofty of phrase—to me, who caught them as they came from your lips, losing none of their fire, and so flashed them all burning into Texas, far away. But of what avail would be such recount? Distance separates us and time has come between. Those are the old years, these are the new, with newer years beyond. Life like a sea is filling from rivers of experience. Forgetfulness rises as a tide and creeps upward to drown within us those stories of the days that were. And because this is true, it comes to me that you as a memory must stand tallest in the midst of my regard. For of you I find within me no forgetfulness. I have met others; they came, they tarried, they departed. They came again; and on this second encounter the recollection of their existences smote upon me as a surprise. I had forgotten them as though they had not been. But such is not your tale. Drawn on the plates of memory, as with a tool of diamond, I carry you both in broadest outline and in each least of shade; and there hangs no picture in the gallery of hours gone, to which I turn with more of pleasure and of good. Nor am I alone in my recollection. Do I pass through the Fifth Avenue Hotel on my way to the Hoffman, that vandyked dispenser leans pleasantly across his counter, to ask with deepest interest: "Do you hear from the Old Man now?" Or am I belated in Shanley's, a beaming ring of waiters—if it be not an hour overrun of custom—will half-circle my table, and the boldest, "Pat," will question timidly, yet with a kindly Galway warmth: "How's the Old Man?" Old Man! That is your title: at once dignified and affectionate; and by it you