William Jordan, Junior

It had been raining all day in London. The beating of water, cold, monotonous and heavy upon the streets, had now acquired mystery from the darkness of a November night. The vag...

The boy, whose nature was like the strings of some miraculous instrument which are not only susceptible to the slightest human touch, but are also responsive to the delicate wav...

It was in the small hours of the morning when his father entered the chamber again. The boy lay wide-eyed, with his head pillowed upon his hands. He was gazing through the curta...

He began to read the newspaper at the first word of the first page, at the top corner of the left hand. He read slowly and carefully every word the page contained. He then turne...

“Look up ‘C,’ Harby, vollum six,” said the bald-headed man, rubbing his hands with much satisfaction, and then adjusting a pair of pince-nez which hung by a gold cord from his n...

“Does that mean, my father,” he said at last, in a choking voice, “that because we enjoy this little room of ours, we purchase the priceless hours we spend in it by pieces of si...

All through the afternoon he wandered up and down the crowded pavements of the great city. In the course of his weary pilgrimage he entered many shops and offices sickly yet dog...

His visit to the hairdresser; the triumphant effrontery with which he had asked for his locks to be shorn; the calm fortitude with which he had submitted to that searching and p...

A somewhat ponderous, double-chinned, exceedingly handsome and prosperous gentleman was standing with the back of his ample form to the fire. The skirts of his frock-coat were o...

When he reached the little room his father was still occupied in the shop. With a remarkable suppression of his all-mastering desire, he determined to wait until eight o’clock u...

“That is so, sir, putting it classically, which unfortunately I am not in the habit of doing myself,” said Mr. Dodson. “In fact, sir, since you appear to press the question, it...

However, upon the following morning, during the luncheon hour, this drastic opinion underwent a modification as serious as it was unexpected. It occurred in the following manner...

Mr. Octavius Crumpett paused, with his solid silver paper-knife suspended in the air, to listen to this masterful piece of elocution on the part of Mr. M. A. Dodson. As the deli...

“I have, my son,” said Mr. Dodson. “I have discovered that it is necessary to myself to marry a little money. You see, my son, I have come to an understanding with Chrissie. And...

“Don’t be nervous, old boy,” said his mentor kindly, as he took him firmly by the arm; “at the worst they can’t do more than eat you, and if they do they will wish they hadn’t.”

Before Mr. Jordan could comprehend what the position was that this majestic old lady had occupied for many years, she rose from her chair in a very grave and stiff manner, and s...

Mr. Dodson’s diagnosis of his friend’s condition proved to be a correct one. He had to lay him upon his back and to obtain water before the eyes could be induced to re-open, and...

He burnt the midnight lamp full many nights. He attended the ignoble duties of the day as formerly, rendering his service scrupulously in return for the pieces of silver he rece...

William Jordan, in his bewilderment, in his strange self-amaze, in his dim uncertainty of the course of action he must now pursue, passed half-an-hour in the counting-house belo...

“My dilemma is this, Crumpett,” said his distinguished visitor. “It has recently been suggested to me by my friend, the Prime Minister, that I should allow myself to be nominate...

“Come to-night to the mission at half-past eight,” he said brusquely, “and we will find work for your hands. See, there is the mission.” He pointed across the street to a grimy...

“Yes, my father, I will return,” said William Jordan, “I will return to our little room. When I have gone out and lain at the breasts of my mother the Earth; and I have walked i...

“Dost thou see, my father?” he said. “Earth, my mother, has given the strength to my right hand. I think now, my father, I shall be among the English authors.”

“No,” said the author, “I think it would be more accurate to define it as a poem. It is cast in a kind of hexameter which yet is hardly a hexameter at all--at least it is not th...

“And I didn’t stop at Octavius, and I didn’t stop at Pa,” said the mournful emissary. “I went up-stairs again to Robert Brigstock, who gives Octavius a hand with the _belles let...

“Whatever that infernal writing was,” said Dodson, “it was the cause of my not being able to get the two hundred pounds I asked for from the dealers. Do what I would, say what I...

Yet how incomprehensible it was, in the teeth of all the uncompromising hostility that had been visited upon the manuscript itself, and the remarkable apathy of all who had been...

The old man led his visitor into the shop, into the little room, which was now deserted, and thence up the stairs, into the small chamber lighted with dim candles, in which the...