Common Cause: A Novel of the War in America

THAT phenomenon of finance which has relegated many a business man to a pained and bewildered retirement, increase of receipts attended with a parallel deficit, had marked The G...

MOTIVES not fully formulated had impelled Jeremy Robson to the purchase of The Fenchester Guardian. Now that he was face to face with the multiform problem of what he was to do...

THE pippin of a story never ripened into print. Young Mr. Robson’s formal report of the meeting, a staid bit of journalism, appeared in full. But not a word of that brilliant pe...

DUMBA had gone. Von Bernstorff was preparing for departure. The atmosphere which they had created under the cloak of diplomatic privilege was malodorous with the taint of plotti...

ABSTENTION from the art and practice of golf for one week had been Professor Robson’s ukase. Had he foreseen the course of more personal events he would never have issued it. Fo...

JUDGE DANA’S surmise as to Senator Embree and The Guardian partook of the genius of prophecy. “Smiling Mart” had been waiting to assure himself about the new control of the pape...

DEUTSCHLAND, Deutschland über alles!” Three thousand voices blended and swelled in the powerful harmony. The walls of the Fenchester Auditorium trembled to it. The banners, with...

ANNOUNCEMENT of the new paper was not to be formally made as yet. Its projectors had other possible plans in mind. Already, however, its competition bade fair to be fatal to The...

AFTER listening to Andrew Galpin’s verbal report upon Senator Martin Embree’s painful and convincing characterization of The Guardian’s editorial page as for sale to the highest...

BOBOLINK on a grass-tuft piped ecstatic welcome to a long-lost friend, the sun. Five gray and weary days had passed since that amiable orb had bestowed so much as one uncloaked...

THE soft, young contralto voice floating out from the old house on Montgomery Street, mingled with the breath of roses that spread possessively over the veranda. A ripple of spa...

POLITICS as such had never greatly interested Jeremy Robson. The trivial and blatant insincerities of party platforms offended a mind naturally direct and sincere. As he saw the...

HAD any one informed Governor Martin Embree that Miss Marcia Ames was again embellishing Fenchester society, he would have dismissed the matter as of no political moment. That i...

THE Senate proceedings did not open until ten o’clock. Meantime Montrose Clark, President of the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation, and in some part godling of local affai...

LONG years unheard yet unforgotten, the voice of Edwin Garson, President Montrose Clark’s hand-perfected private secretary, warbled with a mellifluous intonation over the teleph...

STEP by step The Guardian followed the war through its pregnant early days. In presentation of the news, both Jeremy and Galpin strove to be conscientiously neutral. For Galpin,...

MR. BURTON HIGMAN mounted the stairs of The Guardian office, dressed in his best suit of clothes. A powerfully inferential mind might have derived from his proud and important b...

“Fer the young lady at Miss Pritchard’s? Right here.” He held them up to his own admiration. “A foot that’s _right_” said the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. “Right _and_ light. Honest wea...

CLICK-CLICK! Click-click! Clickety-click! One hundred pairs of knitting needles furnished a subdued castanet accompaniment to the voice of a long, lean lady-droner who stood upo...

UNDER the far shock of declared war, the sovereign State of Centralia, unready and unrealizing, was rent and seamed from border to border with seismic chasms across which brothe...

LIKE a portent of stern events to come, The Guardian’s Lusitania editorial laid hold on the collective mind of Fenchester. It was a hand set against every man’s breast, bidding...

MIGHTY was the clash of political lances, that spring of 1916, in Fenchester. Senate and Assembly alike rang with noble phrases and high sentiments. The mortal agony of a world...

LAKE SKOHOTA thrusts a long and slender arm past Fenchester to throw it cherishingly about a tiny island, cut off from the University campus and made part of it again by an arch...

CRYSTALLIZING politics left but two figures in the field for the campaign of 1913. That Martin Embree would carry the radical banner was a foregone conclusion. Magnus Laurens wa...

WORDS occasionally take epidemic form. Such was the course of the word “hyphen” through the United States in the year 1916, with its alternate phases, “hyphenate” and “hyphenate...

PHENOMENA do not occur upon legislative flag-staffs without due process. The astonishing manifestation of a sardonic intent above the unconscious lawmakers of Centralia was not...

SUCH advantage as the bee may boast over the butterfly is proverbially supposed to inhere in its industrious habits. But Miss Marcia Ames, now adopting the schedule of the bee a...

THE hyphen editorial spent the following morning on the hook. Its author gave it an affectionate and yearning glance as he passed early to his desk to touch up his substitute le...

THE deep, soft thrill of the contralto voice floated through the warm air on invisible wings. The listener, coming softly up the pathway of the old garden, paused to hearken, to...

He had come in and perched himself upon a corner of Jeremy’s desk, swinging his long legs. A folded copy of that day’s Guardian served him for a fan, which he plied languidly, f...

As if a royal patent had been issued in favor of The Guardian, the Senator’s zealous partisans of the Northern Tier bestowed upon it their patronage. Max Verrall, who revealed h...

“What do you want?” inquired Wackley, dreading to hear that a raise of pay was the requisite. Cheered by the valuable reporter’s negative declaration of content with his lot as...

SOMETHING queer happened to young Mr. Jeremy Robson on the night of July 10th. Despite a lumpy sensation in the back of his neck and his habitual effect of being absolutely fagg...

BEHOLD, now, Miss Marcia Ames, conspiratress, seated in the depths of the Boot & Shoe Infirmary, deep in converse with Dr. Eli Wade, Surgeon of Soles and Healer of Leather. Opin...

STRICKEN, at the first, by the unimaginable vastness of the tragedy which had befallen Europe, the State of Centralia quickly recovered, and lifted up a thousand voices of accla...

Martin Embree. The man had so quickly and surely recovered his poise. Serenity was in his tired smile, and the assurance that from Jeremy he would have understanding and sympath...

HOW essential a prop Martin Embree’s influence had been to the threatened fortunes of The Guardian, its editor was now to learn. Where, hitherto, the paper had offended, “Smilin...

IN the course of a long and varied life, Miss Editha Greer had been consistently eccentric. In the close of it she was not less so. Witness the following telegram received by he...

DEUTSCHTUM moves slowly, because it moves methodically. No general and open manifestation against The Guardian had followed the Lusitania editorial. None retaliated for the atta...

SIX weeks after Martin Embree’s triumphant election to the governorship, the owner of The Guardian visited the Fenchester Trust Company for the formality of renewing his note. H...

PATRIOTISM had waxed and politics waned with the ebbing of the year 1917, in Centralia. Through the murk and fume of alien treachery, enemy propaganda, and the reckless self-see...

NO advertising patronage was lost to The Guardian as the result of the luncheon-conference. But Jeremy Robson’s offer to let a committee investigate his circulation was costly....

BUDDY HIGMAN, prosperous in a new blue-and-yellow mackinaw (Christmas), a pair of fur mittens (New Year’s), and high snow-boots (accumulated savings), entered the Fenchester Pos...