Category: Romance

Edith and John: A Story of Pittsburgh

Fog and smoke and grime hung over the city of Pittsburgh: a thickening blanket, soggy in its cumbrous pall. The rain came down like gimlets; the air was savage, miserably embracing; the streets were sodden, muddy, filthy, with dirty streams babbling along the gutters; the ligh...

Chapters

31. CHAPTER XXXI.

The rattling wheels and squeaking springs could be heard far up the road. Anne was returning with her precious load. The horses trotted down the hill, and came up with a rattle...

5. CHAPTER V.

Star Barton? She was the one scintillating light that shone out of the milky way of the Barton family. She was a sport of the family tree--a lily nourished in a quagmire. And ho...

10. CHAPTER X.

John Winthrope had a small cozy room by himself off the main office of Hiram Jarney. It was about the size of a twelve by sixteen rug, and so richly furnished that when he got i...

1. CHAPTER I.

Fog and smoke and grime hung over the city of Pittsburgh: a thickening blanket, soggy in its cumbrous pall. The rain came down like gimlets; the air was savage, miserably embrac...

8. CHAPTER VIII.

Peter Dieman, since he had reached his present state of affluence and influence, did not condescend to wait on customers. He was now above that menial branch of his trade. He se...

25. CHAPTER XXV.

Ever efficient and ever advancing, though the time since he left his mountain home was short, John Winthrope had pressed onward and upward till he was not only the assistant tre...

29. CHAPTER XXIX.

It was another morning in May. The sun was climbing over the wooded hills to the east; the wind was pulsing through the leafing trees; the wild flowers were blooming by the road...

17. CHAPTER XVII.

As a metaphysician, John Winthrope could not present his bill of services, in the nonprofessional sense, for his visit to the Jarneys. This was the calamitous burden that bore s...

20. CHAPTER XX.

Christmas had come and gone; New Years was here, and passing, and Edith still lay upon her bed. Her face was thin and wan and spiritless. Her form had wasted away till she was a...

22. CHAPTER XXII.

Hiram Jarney sat in his lounging chair, in evening clothes, reading the daily newspapers, and smoking a Santa Clara cigar. His feet were encased in a pair of patent-leather slip...

15. CHAPTER XV.

An auto being in waiting at the curb, and John being ready at the appointed time, he and Mr. Jarney joined each other at the main entrance of the office building; and together w...

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

Black and sinister, like The Bastille, rears the bulky rambling building of that famous institution where infractors of the law are compensated for their weaknesses. Amidst verd...

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.

It was a morning in May. Happy birds sang in the tree tops, and flowers speckled the green grass of the park with their variegated bloom. The sun, the first for days, threw his...

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

Refreshing sleep, though late in coming, restored Edith's composure. She came down to breakfast temperamentally disposed to enter into negotiations with her father toward the co...

9. CHAPTER IX.

In Oakland avenue there stands another mansion. It is a lofty pile of brownish stone, and is luxuriously complete in its every detail. Standing as it does on a prominent hill, i...

4. CHAPTER IV.

The forlorn individual whom Peter Dieman saw through his spyhole, during his soul stirring conversation with the stranger, was Kate Barton, the wife of Billy Barton, the waterma...

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

It is wonderful how prosperity transcends every other medium in working a transformation in a poor stick of humanity, who has been chortled, like a shuttle-lock, through the shi...

30. CHAPTER XXX.

There is a little frame house sitting, in the shade of maples and oaks, by the roadside to the south aways from Chalk Hill. It is a leaning building, to some extent, in many way...

7. CHAPTER VII.

The day following the accidental meeting of Miss Jarney and Mr. Winthrope, under such wretched meteorological circumstances, was spent by the latter in the office of Jarney & Lo...

2. CHAPTER II.

In Highland avenue, far removed from the crowded thoroughfares, the congested tenements, the cheap homes of the middle class, the rush and roar of industry--out where the wind a...

14. CHAPTER XIV.

The morbidly silent Monroe went about his duties with the serenity of a cat out on a dark night. The immobility of his starched face left no impression on the beholder of it as...

19. CHAPTER XIX.

John made no reply, feeling that no reply should be made at that time, while the father was worrying so; for in that same moment he was moved himself beyond the efficacy of a co...

21. CHAPTER XXI.

Peter Dieman sat in his high-backed leather-cushioned chair smoking a black cigar, surrounded with all the ease and sumptuousness of a successfully domesticated gentleman. As he...

11. CHAPTER XI.

Mike Barton, the rounder, knocked off from his lecherous avocation the afternoon referred to in the previous chapter, as was his custom every day at that time, and wandered aiml...

13. CHAPTER XIII.

Peter Dieman was happier than usual one morning, if he could ever be called happy by any possibility of reading such a state of feeling in his otherwise perverse and irascible c...

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

Jacob Cobb, the big boss, sat in his easy chair, surrounded by his spendthrift family, with whom he was communing on the glories of that fame which money brings to those who ear...

3. CHAPTER III.

The rusty perspective of a four story building rises in the midst of many similarly nondescript structures, between Wood and Liberty streets, looking out over the cobblestoned w...

6. CHAPTER VI.

To Star Barton, it was like going into a fairyland. Edith was the fairy, Star the lowly nymph. Edith was the sparkling diamond that gave it its setting, Star was the rough jewel...

12. CHAPTER XII.

John Winthrope was sitting by his inelegant little table, and was reading, by the dim gas light, a new text book on modern business methods, and feeling perfectly contented and...

16. CHAPTER XVI.

The world to him had been a series of degenerating allurements ever since he could remember anything; and Evil Repute was the sum of his reward. He was brought up amid the scene...

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

Dressed as on the great occasion when he visited Miss Jarney, Eli Jerey called at the home of Peter Dieman but a short ten minutes after Jacob Cobb had left in such a bad temper...