The Common Lot

From time to time the door opened to admit some tardy person. Then the May sunlight without flooded the dim, long hall with a sudden radiance, even to the arched recess in the r...

"Get all ready before you start," Powers Jackson had said, when his nephew, after four years at Cornell and three years at a famous technical school in the East, had suggested t...

The morning after the funeral Francis Jackson Hart resumed his work on the plans of a large hotel that Walker, Post, and Wright were to build in Denver. This was in all probabil...

The next morning Jackson Hart was once more bending over the large sheets of the plans for the Denver hotel. Now that he knew his fate, the draughting-room under the great skyli...

There were very few men to be found in the club at this hour. The dingy library, buzzing like a beehive at noon with young men, was empty now except for a stranger who was whili...

"I believe he isn't that much of a fool. Just because Powers looked after his mother, and fed him all these years, and gave him an expensive education,--why should he be obliged...

The Spellmans lived on the other side of the city from Mrs. Phillips, on Maple Street, very near the lake. Their little stone-front, Gothic-faced house was pretty nearly all the...

The draughtsman winked at his neighbor and thrust out an elbow at a derisive angle, as he bent himself over the linen plan he was carefully inking in. The man next to him snicke...

Meanwhile above the lake at Forest Park, in a broad, open field, Mrs. Phillips's great house was rapidly rising. It was judged variously by those who had seen it, but it altoget...

The Lady Venetia de Phillips, as the young woman used to call herself in the doll age, had never set foot in a common street car, or, indeed, in anything more public than a day...

Pete was a very sick dog, but as Dr. Coburn boasted, no pampered patient in a private hospital ever had better care. Ultimately he recovered from his operation and went about ga...

After a winter in the city the Harts went to live at Shoreham, taking rooms for the season in a cottage near the club. The new station which the railroad was building at Eversle...

Two years passed and they were still living in the Loring place, which the architect had remodelled comfortably to suit his modern taste. Occasionally he talked of building, and...

Rumor had it that the Powers Jackson trust was about to be fulfilled. It had become known among the friends of the trustees that during these prosperous times the fund for the e...

Jackson had lately bought a couple of hunters, and Sundays, when it was good weather, Helen and he often went over to the club stables to see the horses and the hounds. It was a...

Season shifted into season, and meanwhile an impalpable veil of difference was falling between the architect and his wife. The peaceful days of winter, early spring, and late au...

The Harts were to dine at the Elisha Stewarts' that evening, and the architect had considered this engagement of sufficient importance to bring him back to Chicago all the way f...

Everett Wheeler could hardly be reckoned as a man of sentiment. Yet in the matter of selecting an architect for the new school he stood out persistently against the wishes of Pe...

About six miles from the centre of the city on the South Side, not far from the lake, might be seen the foundations and first two stories of a considerable building that had bee...

Hart's design for the school had finally been accepted by the trustees, and the plans were placed on exhibition in the Art Institute. Little knots of people--students, draughtsm...

Late in March the corner-stone for the Jackson Institute was laid. It was a desolate winterish day, and the prairie wind chilled to the bone the little group of interested peopl...

Powers Jackson had given the old Jackson homestead and farm at Vernon Falls in Vermont to Helen, and with it a small legacy of twelve thousand dollars "as a maintenance fund." S...

Husband and wife did not speak while they were being driven across the city to their home. That which lay between them was too heavy to be touched upon at once in words. Several...

As the architect had said to his wife, nothing of a serious nature was to happen. In the end Everett Wheeler settled the matter. After the first gust of passion it was clear eno...

The girl's word was like a blow in the face. It toppled over any self-complacency that had survived these last disintegrating months. Was he as mean a thing as that? So little t...

The next morning Hart found himself on a sofa in a bare, dusky room that looked as if it was a doctor's office. He sat up and tried to think what had happened to him overnight....

... He had been lying there long hours close to the warm earth that was preparing for a new life. The thin branches of the trees rose bare and severe between him and the blue sk...

The architect had a long time to wait in Wheeler's office that morning. The lawyer rarely came in before ten, so the stenographer said, looking suspiciously into the man's white...

The old Jackson homestead at Vernon Falls was a high, narrow, colonial house with three gables. Upon the broad terrace facing the south side there was a row of graceful, "winegl...

The next day and the next went by in the peace of the old house. Now that the event which had so wholly occupied the man's mind since the night when the Glenmore burned had come...

There was a stir among the reporters gathered in the little room where the coroner's inquest on the Glenmore fire was being held, when it became known that the architect was pre...

When they entered the house, Helen hurried upstairs to the child, who had been calling for her, Mrs. Hart said. Presently the doctor came for his evening visit, and when, after...

But if in her heroic soul she was ready to pay, and to make him pay, at the price of public shame for her and her children, the full penalty of his misdeeds, it was not to be so...

Dr. Coburn had at last found time for the episode of matrimony, so Venetia announced to Helen one afternoon. She had run in on her way to the city, and her eyes sparkled mischie...

That small fragment of Chicago society which had known the Jackson Harts, and interested itself in their doings, was mildly stirred over the news that the brilliant and promisin...