The Boss of Little Arcady

I awoke the next morning under most vivid portents of calamity. I believe I am neither notional, nor given to small, vulgar superstitions, but I have learned that this peculiar...

Mrs. Potts had written. I had Solon's word for it; but that which followed the writing will not cease within this generation or the next to be an affair of the most baffling mys...

Solon Denney's home, in charge of Mrs. Delia Sullivan, late of Kerry, was four blocks up the shaded street from my own. Within one block of its gate as I approached it that morn...

To the crime of being Potts the wretched Colonel had now added malversation of a trust fund. But I crave surcease, while it may be mine, from the immediately troubling waters of...

Mistress Caroline Lansdale, a one-time belle of the Old Dominion, relict of the late Colonel Jere Lansdale, C.S.A., legislator and duellist, whose devotion to her in the days of...

Miss Caroline dutifully returned the calls that were paid her, with never a suspicion that her slavery to strong drink had been the secret inspiration of them. She was not yet a...

The winter that followed proved to be a season of unrest for our town. Mrs. Aurelia Potts was a leaven of yeast that fermented its social waters, erstwhile calm, not to say stag...

It was spring again, a Sunday in early May, warm, humid, scented with blossoms that were bodied souls of the laughing air. They starred the bank that fell away from my porch to...

=Late last Thursday evening one Jonas Rodney Potts, better known to this community as "Upright" Potts, stumbled into the mill-race, where it had providentially been left open ju...

The next _Argus_ said of Miss Caroline's afternoon that "the ladies present one and all report a most enjoyable time." There was another mysterious paragraph, too, farther down...

Lest Miss Katharine Lansdale seem unduly formidable, I should, perhaps, say that I appeared to be alone in finding her so. Little Arcadians of my own sex younger than myself--an...

I spoke to Solon of Billy Durgin, whose peculiar, not to say mysterious, behavior I had been compelled to notice. I had first observed him that afternoon as we passed the City H...

After an autumn speciously benign came our season of cold and snow. It proved to be a season of unwonted severity, every weather expert in town, from Uncle William McCormick, wh...

If it must be my lot to dream out a life of insubstantial visions, that were well. But it appeared not unreasonable that I should keep at least one ponderable dog by me, as an e...

A graver charge than frivolity was soon to be brought against the widow of the late Colonel Jere Lansdale. Not with her antiquated gown, her assisting staff, the gay bonnet, nor...

In deference to the wishes of J.R.C. Tuckerman, I had formed a habit of breakfasting in summer on the little back porch that overlooks the river. Less radical departures from or...

He whom they had, with facetious intent, called "the Boss of Little Arcady" now began to wear a mien of defiance. From being confessedly distraught, he displayed, as the days we...

Superficially and distantly considered, the woman from whom even J. Rodney Potts must flee in terror would not be of a sort to excite the imagination pleasurably. A less impulsi...

In the days and nights that followed this interview I associated rather more than usual with Jim. It seemed well to do so. I needed to learn once more some of the magnificent be...

And so began the time of Miss Caroline among us,--one effect the more of Fate's mad trickery. It was my privilege to be more intimately aware of her concerns than was the town a...

The incomparable Lucy Tait was still but a star to be adored in her distant heaven when I went away from Little Arcady to learn some things not taught in the faded brick schoolh...

Swiftly I appraised the cool perfection of her attire, scenting the spice of the pinks she had thrust at her belt. And I suffered one heart-quickening look from her eyes before...

A week after the publication of that blithe bit of acrimony which opens this tale, Colonel J. Rodney Potts, recreated and natty in a new summer suit of alpaca, his hat freshly i...

Clem's prolonged convalescence was a trial to his militant spirit. The month or more of curious weakness in his body, always before so stout, left him with a fear that he had be...

It was too true that I could not call her "Little Miss," as I had lightly called her mother "Miss Caroline" at our first encounter. Of a dusky pallor was Miss Lansdale when I fi...

There is no need to conceal that I was by this time put to it for matters to think upon not clearly related to myself; in other words for matters extraneous to my neighbor's tro...

The significance of Miss Lansdale's manner, rather than her words, ran through my darkened thoughts like a thread as I played the game that night. After a third defeat this thre...

I had Clem to myself for a time. Little Miss, it seemed, was not yet rugged enough for travel into the far Little Country. Nor was she at once to be convinced that she might saf...

A wanderer from Little Arcady in early days returned to its placid shades after many years, drawn thither by a little quick-born yearning to walk the old streets again. But he f...

"Miss Cahline comin' this yeh time a' yeah so's 't'll seem mo' soft an' homelike. Ah gaiss she go'n' a' sprighten raght up when she see th' summeh time all pleasant."