Chapter 1

Produced by Louise Hope and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

[Transcriber's Note:

This text was printed as a twelve-page addition to the James De Mille novel _An American Baron_, published 1872. The "pointing finger" symbol is shown here as -->.

Where available, the Project Gutenberg e-text number is given in brackets after each title. Note that the e-text will probably not be based on the listed edition (Harper & Brothers, no later than 1872).

Full names of authors are given at the end of the e-text.]

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HARPER'S LIBRARY OF SELECT NOVELS.

"THE LIBRARY OF SELECT NOVELS" has become an institution, a reliable and unfailing recreative resource essential to the comfort of countless readers. The most available entertainment of modern times is fiction: from the cares of busy life, from the monotonous routine of a special vocation, in the intervals of business and in hours of depression, a good story, with faithful descriptions of nature, with true pictures of life, with authentic characterization, lifts the mind out of the domain of care, refreshes the feelings, and enlists the imagination. The Harpers' "Library of Select Novels" is rapidly approaching its four hundredth number, and it is safe to say that no series of books exists which combines attractiveness and economy, local pictures and beguiling narrative, to such an extent and in so convenient a shape. In railway-cars and steamships, in boudoirs and studios, libraries and chimney corners, on verandas and in private sanctums, the familiar brown covers are to be seen. These books are enjoyed by all classes; they appear of an average merit, and with a constant succession that is marvelous; and in subject and style offer a remarkable variety. --_Boston Transcript._

PRICE