Category: Novels

The Barton Experiment

Long and loud rang all the church bells of Barton on a certain summer evening twenty years ago. It was not a Sunday evening, for during an accidental lull there was heard, afar off yet distinctly, the unsanctified notes of the mail-carrier’s horn. And yet the doors of the vill...

Chapters

18. CHAPTER XVII.

The fire which destroyed the Mississippi Valley Woolen Mills did such damage in the ranks of the temperance reformers that for a few months Crupp, Tomple, and several others had...

7. CHAPTER VI.

On a pleasant August evening, at that particular portion of the day in which twilight shades into night, Fred Macdonald left his father’s house and walked toward the opposite po...

15. CHAPTER XIV.

As Sam Crayme strode toward the body of the town, his business instincts took strong hold of his sentiments, in the manner natural alike to saints and sinners, and he laid a pla...

14. CHAPTER XIII.

The superintendency of the Mississippi Valley Woolen Mills was a position which exactly suited Fred Macdonald, and it gave him occasion for the expenditure of whatever superfluo...

6. CHAPTER V.

Why old Bunley had made Barton his place of residence nobody knew. The most plausible theory ever advanced on the subject came from the former proprietor of the Barton House, wh...

9. CHAPTER VIII.

The funeral services of George Doughty were as largely attended as the great temperance meeting had been, and the attendants admitted--although the admission was not, logically,...

16. CHAPTER XV.

Among the Barton people who had actually made any effort for the sake of temperance, no one found greater comfort in contemplative retrospects of his own work than Deacon Jones....

5. CHAPTER IV.

Tom Adams, driver of the brick-yard wagon, and signer of one of the pledges circulated at the great temperance meeting, was certainly a man worth saving. He had a wife and was r...

17. CHAPTER XVI.

During the day or two which followed his interview with Tappelmine, Father Baguss was consumed with conflicting emotions. He could not deny that his offer to help Tappelmine had...

4. CHAPTER III.

The first task to which the penitent Crupp devoted himself on the morning after the meeting was hardly that which his new admirers had supposed he would attempt. They imagined h...

2. CHAPTER I.

Long and loud rang all the church bells of Barton on a certain summer evening twenty years ago. It was not a Sunday evening, for during an accidental lull there was heard, afar...

13. CHAPTER XII.

The holy hilarity which Father Baguss enjoyed on his way home, after having assisted in bringing Harry Wainright back, did not depart with the shades of night. The old man was o...

3. CHAPTER II.

On the morning after the meeting the happiest man in all Barton was the Reverend Jonas Wedgewell. He had been one of the first to agitate the subject of a grand temperance demon...

8. CHAPTER VII.

George Doughty lay propped up in bed; standing beside him, and clasping his hand tightly, was his wife; near him were his two oldest children, seemingly as ignorant of what was...

10. CHAPTER IX.

The mail-stage did not make its appearance at the usual hour on the day following Crupp’s conversation with Father Baguss, and during a lull in the desultory conversation which...

12. CHAPTER XI.

Here were two elements of Barton society with which Mr. Crupp had not been so successful as he had hoped; these were the doctors, and that elastic body known as “the boys.” Indi...

11. CHAPTER X.

Speaking after the manner of the flesh, the Reverend Timotheus Brown had found only plain sailing on the river; spiritually, he had a very different experience. “As stubborn as...

1. CHAPTER XVII.