The Main Chance

asked for a suburban time table. He carried this back to the club, where the atmosphere of his cool, quiet room soothed him; and he lay down on a couch and studied the list of O...

Evelyn Porter had come home in June to take her place as mistress of her father's house. The fact that she alone of the girls belonging to families of position in the town had g...

The night wind of the plain blew cold in their faces as they stepped out upon the Great River platform. There was a hint of storm in the air and clouds rode swiftly overhead. Th...

The winds of January had no better luck in shaking down the leaves of the scrub oaks on the Porter hillside than their predecessors of November and December. The snows came and...

Wheaton ran away from the livelier spirits of the Knights of Midas, who urged him to join in a celebration at the club after the ball broke up. He pleaded the necessity of early...

When he confided to John Saxton his belief that there were those among his fellow townsmen who thought him "crooked," William Porter had no serious idea that such was the case....

There were two separate and distinct sides to the annual carnival of the Knights of Midas. The main object to which the many committees on arrangements addressed themselves was...

Raridan was at the station to meet Evelyn's guests, as he had promised. He had established a claim upon their notice on the occasion of one of his visits to Evelyn at college, a...

That is a disastrous moment in the history of any man in which he concludes that the problems of life are easy of solution. Life has been likened by teachers of ethics to a grea...

John Saxton trotted his pony through a broken gate into a great yard that had once been sown in blue grass, and at the center of which lay the crumbled ruins of a fountain. This...

Wheaton sat in his room at The Bachelors' the next evening, clutching a copy of a _Gazette_ extra in which a few sentences under long headlines gave the latest rumor about the m...

The afternoon invited the eyes to far, blue horizons, and as Evelyn stood up and shook loosely in her hand the sand she had taken from the box, she contemplated the hazy distanc...

James Wheaton was thirty-five years old, and was reckoned among the solid young business men of Clarkson. He had succeeded far beyond his expectations and was fairly content wit...

The president of the Clarkson National Bank ignored the question and rolled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, as he waited for his words to make their full impr...

The Clarkson Club was, during most of the day, the loneliest place in town. Only a few of the sleeping rooms were occupied regularly, and luncheon was the one incident of the da...

There are men like Raridan, who are devoid of evil impulse, and who are swayed and touched by the charm of women through an excess in themselves of that nicer feeling which we c...

Evelyn had telephoned to Mrs. Whipple of her father's illness in terms which allayed alarm; but when the afternoon paper referred to it ominously, the good woman set out through...

John Saxton was a good deal the worse for wear as he swung himself from a sleeper in the Clarkson station and bolted for a down-town car. Coal mining is a dirty business, and th...

Raridan stayed in town all summer, and he and Saxton saw a good deal of each other. They drove often to the country club together, and Saxton became, as people said, another of...

To show that she was not limited to her own particular set in her choice of guests, Mabel had asked Raridan, whom she wished to know better, and Wheaton, who had danced with her...

Evelyn was at the Whipples'. It was a morning in May. Spring possessed the valley. The long vistas across the hills were closing as the leaves crept into the trees again. The wi...

There was much to do, and John Saxton had been back and forth twice between the ranch house and the village before the sun had crept high into the heavens. The little village ha...

The main bank room was only dimly lighted, but a cluster of electric lights burned brilliantly above the directors' mahogany table, around which were chairs of the Bank of Engla...

Evelyn acted on her father's suggestion that she ask some friends to visit her, and she summoned two of her classmates to come out for the carnival. She told Raridan of their co...

A great storm came out of the north late in January and beat fiercely upon Clarkson. It left a burden of snow on the town and was followed by a week of bitter cold. The sun shon...

Porter's vacation was not altogether wasted. As he lounged about and philosophized to the Bostonians on Western business conditions, his restless mind took hold of a new project...

The Girl That Tries Hard was giving a dance at the Country Club. The Girl That Tries Hard was otherwise Mabel Margrave, wherein lay the only point of difference between herself...

Timothy Margrave was, in common phrase, a good railroad man. He had advanced by slow degrees from the incumbency of those lowly manual offices called jobs, to the performance of...

Porter went into Fenton's private office and shut and locked the door after him. He always did this, and Fenton, who humored his best client's whims perforce, pushed back the la...

There was a cup of tea at the Whipples' for any one that dropped in at five o'clock. The general kept a syphon in the icebox, and his wife's tea, which he loathed, gave him his...

Saxton dined alone at the Clarkson Club, as he usually did, and went afterward to his office, which he still maintained in the Clarkson National Building. He had been studying t...

The iron thrall of winter was broken at last. Great winds still blew in the valley, but their keen edge was dulled. Their errand was not to destroy now, but to build. Robins and...

It was late in the afternoon. Wheaton had been unusually busy with routine work and the directors had taken an hour of his time. He had turned away from Fenton to answer Margrav...

There is a common law of character which is greater than the canons. It fills many volumes of records in the high court of Experience, and we add to it daily by our instinctive...

Porter had wakened that morning with a pain-racked body and the hot taste of fever in his mouth. He dressed and went downstairs to breakfast, but left the table and returned to...

In the days that followed, John Saxton knew again the heartache and loneliness which he had known before Warry Raridan came into his life. He had lost the first real friend he h...

It was Fenton who most nearly voiced the public sorrow at the death of Warrick Raridan. His address at the memorial meeting of the Clarkson Bar Association surprised the communi...

There was a tradition that no one had ever been black-balled in the Knights of Midas, so when Timothy Margrave got Wheaton's signature to an application for membership the cashi...

John Saxton sat in the office of the Traction Company on a hot night in July. Fenton had just left him. The transfer to the Margrave syndicate had been effected and John would n...

The affairs of the Traction Company proved to be in a wretched tangle. Saxton employed an expert accountant to open a set of books for the company, while he gave his own immedia...

After the interim of quiet that Lent always brings in Clarkson, the spring came swiftly. There was a renewal of social activities which ran from dances and teas into outdoor gat...

Porter insisted that Margrave should not have the Traction Company at any price, though the general manager of the Transcontinental was persistent in his offers. As Margrave did...

At two o'clock Warry Raridan sat on a table in the United States court room, kicking his heels together and smoking a cigarette. A number of reporters stood about; the ex-presid...

The days that followed brought uncertainty and doubt to the heart and mind of John Saxton. He had seen Evelyn several times before she left home, on occasions when he went to th...