John Brent

I write in the first person; but I shall not maunder about myself. I am in no sense the hero of this drama. Call me Chorus, if you please,--not Chorus merely observant and impas...

It happened that, on a journey, early in the same summer, some twenty miles from my mine, I had come upon a band of horses feeding on the prairie. They cantered off as I went ri...

Hector of Troy, Homer’s Hector, was my first hero in literature. Not because he loved his wife and she him, as I fancy that noble wives and husbands love in the times of trial n...

A man who does not love luxury is merely an incomplete man, or, if he prefers, an ignoramus. A man who cannot dispense with luxury, and who does not love hard fare, hard bed, ha...

“You have got the wrong clue. I named him after our old dancing-master. Pumps the horse has a favorite amble, precisely like that skipping walk that Pumps the man used to set us...

The climate of the best zone in America is transcendent for its purpose. Its purpose is to keep men at their keenest, at high edge and high ardor all the time. Then, for enchant...

The sun had just gone down. There was a red wrangle of angry vapors over the mounds of mountain westward. A brace of travellers from Salt Lake way rode up and lighted their camp...

Early on one of the fairest of afternoons when all were fairest, we reached Fort Bridger. Bridger had been an old hunter, trapper, and by and by that forlorn hope of civilizatio...

“Now, brethren,” says Shamberlain to us, “ef you want to hear exhortin’ as runs without stoppin’, step up and listen to the Apossle of the Gentiles. Prehaps,” and here Jake wink...

We were turning away from the pretty cage, in order not to frighten the bird, pretty or not, when an oldish man, tending his fire at the farther side of the wagon, gave us “Good...

“Come, gentlemen,” said the father, in a lively way. “We are all campaigners. Sit down and take a cup of tea with us. No ceremony. _A la guerre, comme à la guerre._ I cannot giv...

Mr. Clitheroe’s thoughts loved to recur to his native Lancashire, smoky though its air might be, and clean-shaved the grass of its lawns. I could not help believing that all the...

It grew dusk. Glimmering camp-fires marked the circle of the Mormon caravan. The wagons seemed each one, in the gloaming, a giant white nightcap of an ogress leaning over her co...

Mr. Clitheroe grew more and more communicative, as we wandered about over the open. I drew from him, or rather, with few words of guidance now and then, let him impart, his hist...

Two long hours I had kept Mr. Clitheroe in talk. For my friend’s sake I would have prolonged the interview indefinitely. For my own, too. He was a new character to me, this gent...

I awoke in the solemn quiet dawn of the next morning with my forebodings of ill gone, and in their stead what I could not but deem a baseless hopefulness for our new friends’ we...

The two men faced each other,--the big, hulking, bullying saint; the slight, graceful, self-possessed gentile. Sizzum quailed a little when he saw the other did not quail. He se...

“They have gone to the southward,--those two men. They could not get away in any other direction. I have heard Murker say he knows all the country between here and the Arkansaw....

It came afternoon, as we rode on steadily. The country grew rougher. The horses never flinched, but they sweated freely, and foam from their nostrils flecked their shoulders. By...

I remember it now,--I only saw it then;--for those strong scenes of nature assault the soul whether it will or no, fight in against affirmative or negative resistance, and bide...

I unbound her from the saddle. I could not utter a word for pity. She essayed to speak; but her lips only moved. She could not change her look. So many hours hardening herself t...

I sprang up, after my last morning slumber, with vitality enough for my wounded friend and myself. I felt that I could carry double responsibility, as Fulano had carried double...

We crossed the backbone of the continent, climbing up the clefts between the ragged vertebræ, and over the top of that meandering spine, fleshed with great grassy mounds; then p...

For the last hour I had ridden close to Brent. I saw that it was almost up with him. He swayed in his saddle. His eye was glazed and dull. But he kept his look fixed on the litt...

While his mind slept, Nature was gently renewing him. Quiet is cure to an untainted life. There was no old fever of discontent in his brain. He had regrets, but no remorses. Oth...

“Find me a wife, box her up so that no one will stop her _in transitu_, mark Simeon Pathie, M. D., U. S. A., and ship to Fort Vancouver, Oregon, where I shall be stationed next...

“What a horse beyond all horses yours is!” said Biddulph to me next morning, as we rode along cheerily through the fresh, frosty air of December. “I think, when your continent g...

“We are hastening on. I can write you but one word. Our journey has been prosperous. Mr. Armstrong is very kind. My dear father, I fear, is shattered out of all steadiness. God...

It was June when I reached London. Business, not fashion, was my object. I wished to be at a convenient centre of that mighty huddle of men and things; so I drove to Smorley’s H...

It was an innovation, a revolution. Mankind objects to both. It came from America, and though America has given tobacco, woman’s rights, the potato, model yachts, model States,...

It was with much curiosity and interest in Padiham that I stepped down into the basement, and entered his shop. I reverence as much a great mechanic, in degree, perhaps in kind,...

How jubilant I felt the next morning as I made my way toward Lamely Court! The Thames really seemed to me a pure and lucent current. I began to fancy that there might be a stray...

“I am short, and I shall try to make a long story short,” said Padiham. “I wish to tell you, in as few words as I may, why Mr. Clitheroe and his daughter are in my house.

“How easy it seems for noble souls to be noble!” thought I, as I followed Padiham up the neat staircase of his House of Charity. “What a beautiful vengeance it is of this man up...