The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

Then a feeling of reproval came to her as the minutest memory of that wonderful yesterday rose to her mind, and the vow she had made to honor and obey seemed to have been too ea...

Meshach Milburn had locked the store after writing some letters, and had taken the broad street for Judge Custis's gate. The news of his disappearance towards the Furnace, with...

Vesta was awakened by Roxy, Virgie, and her mother all standing around her bed at once, exclaiming something unintelligible together. It was late morning, the whole family havin...

Judge Custis was well out of town, riding to the north, when the little reading-circle assembled, without his patronage, over the old store, and the young minister directed it....

The Washington Tavern, or, rather, the brick sidewalk which came up to its doors, and was the lounging-place for all the grown loiterers in Princess Anne, had been in the greate...

Phoebus passed along the side of a large, black, cypress-shaded mill-pond, and found the boundary stone again, and took the angle from its northern face as a compass-point, and,...

When it was announced to Levin and Hulda, who had meantime been talking in the garden, dangerously near the subject of love, that they were to be given a ride to Cannon's Ferry...

The Legislature was annually beset by strong lobby forces, and an embittered contest between the Potomac Canal and the greater railway company, to strangle each other, left the...

The girl comforted the sightless man, and led him on, indifferent to danger. He waded the deep places, where the water soothed his wounds and filled his blistered sockets with c...

Vesta had been sitting half an hour beside her unconscious husband, listening to his broken speech, and thinking upon the rapidity of events once started on their course, like e...

Some piles of wood and an old wharf were at the river-side, and a little scow, half filled with water, and with only a broken piece of paddle in it, was the only boat the pungy...

A thin fur of frost was on the level farm-lands, and the saffron and orange leaves were falling almost audibly from the trees, as Levin Dennis awoke on Wednesday, in the long, l...

None thought to look at Van Dorn, nor ask what had become of him, and his friend Sorden removed his body, unseen, to a spot in the pine woods, where his unmarked grave was dug,...

Judge Custis, whom we left riding out of Princess Anne on Sunday afternoon, kept straight north, crossed the bottom of Delaware in the early evening, and went to bed at Laurel,...

He took a long look at Samson, however, who mildly returned it in the most respectful manner, as if he had never seen the strange gentleman before. "And now, my pals," Joe Johns...

"I can say nothing. The night I drove Virgie to Snow Hill I drove over poor Wonnell's body. A strange negro was seen here--an enemy of your servant, Samson. The new cook at Teac...

At Princess Anne Vesta had moved her husband to Teackle Hall, and he occupied her father's room and seemed to be growing better, though the doctor said that he had best be sent...

It was twilight when Meshach Milburn closed his story, and silence and pallid eve drew together in the Custis sitting-room, resembling the two people there, thinking on matrimon...

Opposite McLane's room was the vestibule to the slave-pen in the garret, a room Van Dorn usually slept in. With her emotions profoundly excited, though she had not revealed them...

The day was far advanced when Jimmy Phoebus was strong enough to rise and walk, and leave the refuge in the woods. He advised the colored woman to crawl through the pine-trees a...

They now approached an island with low bluffs, on which appeared a considerable village, shining whitely amid the straight brown trunks of a grove of pine-trees; but no people s...

When Levin Dennis awoke in the bottom of the old wagon it was being rapidly driven, and Van Dorn's voice from the driver's seat was heard to say, without its usual lisp and Span...

Aunt Hominy took her place in the kitchen, and cooked with all her former art, but her voice and understanding were gone, and she never would go past the Entailed Hat, and still...

Snow Hill, when Virgie looked forth upon it, almost seemed built on snow, a white sand composing the streets, gardens, and fields, though the humid air brought vegetation even f...

At the termination of Milburn's long visit, Vesta had gone to her own room, and read her passage in the Bible, and said her prayer, and tried to think, but the day's application...

It seemed to Judge Daniel Custis as he walked abroad into the Sunday sunshine, that he had never seen a more perfect day. The leaves were turning on the great sycamore-trees, an...

"He'll not talk much, then," muttered the woman; "his time had to come. Where will I find another lover at my age? Why, honey," she chuckled to herself, in a looking-glass, "tha...

The dawn had not broken when that fleet traveller, Joseph Johnson, anticipating his enemies by hours, noiselessly tied his horses at the tavern he had erected, and nearly fell i...

Long after midnight, Dover was in bed, except at one large house on the Capitol green, where light shone through the chinks and cracks of curtains and shutters, and some watch-d...

Judge Custis was the most important man in the county. He belonged to the oldest colonial family of distinction, the Custises of Northampton, whose fortune, beginning with King...

As Vesta and her father stepped over the sill of Teackle Hall, it seemed very dear, yet somewhat dread to them, being reclaimed again, but at the penalty of a new member of the...

The new son-in-law, left alone with Judge Custis, asked to be propped up in bed, and nothing was visible that would support his pillow but the aged leather hat-box that Custis,...

"Mamma, it is Milburn himself, in a hack and span. See there; the steeple-top hat, copper buckle and all! Isn't he too funny for anything! But, dear me! he is staring right up a...

The Captain took his place at the reins, his picturesque velvet jacket, wide hat, bright hair, and gay shirt, thighings, belt, and boots, deserving all Patty Cannon's encomiums...

A map would be out of place in a story, yet there are probably some who perceive that this is a story with a reality; and if such will take any atlas and open it at the "Middle...

"So ole Derrick Molleston, Aunt Braner, asked you about my dinner, did he? And it's Bill Greenley that burned the jail? Goy! And the black people licked the kidnappers at Cowgil...

Resolution of character and executive power had been trifled away by Judge Custis. The trader had concluded their interview with a decision and fierceness that left paralysis up...

Meanwhile the steamer was taking Vesta and her husband across the Chesapeake Bay in the night--that greatest, gentlest indentation in the coast of the United States; at once riv...

Aunt Hominy and the little darkeys had made three stolen visits to the hall to peep at the dreadful thing hanging there, as if it were a trap of some kind, liable to drop a spri...

Judge Custis was in his bedroom, in the second story of the large, inn-like mansion at the middle of the village, and he was just recovering from the effects of a long wassail....

Princess Anne, as its royal name implies, is an old seat of justice, and gentle-minded town on the Eastern Shore. The ancient county of Somerset having been divided many years b...

The raid into Delaware was all organized when Levin and Hulda were driven to Johnson's tavern, and the arrival of Van Dorn called forth cheers and yells, as that blushing worthy...

Mrs. Custis was in no situation to give annoyance for that day, as a sick-headache seized her and she kept her room. Infirm of will, purely social in her marriage relations, and...

The wind was blowing in spells, like crowds moved during an argument, at one time mute as awe, again murmurous, and sometimes mutinous and fierce, when Hulda, having heard a few...

One Saturday afternoon in October Meshach Milburn drew out his razor, cup, and hone, and prepared to shave, albeit his beard was never more than harmless down. By a sort of capi...

As the spring burst upon Princess Anne in cherry blossoms and dogwood flowers, in herring and shad weighting the river seines, and broods of young chickens and peach-trees pullu...

Princess Anne had missed for several days some conspicuous citizens, such as Daniel Custis and wife, Captain Phoebus, Levin Dennis, and the free negro Samson--large components o...