THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA
By Booth Tarkington
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CAME TO STAY
CHAPTER II. THE STRANGE LADY
CHAPTER III. LONESOMENESS
CHAPTER IV. THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER
CHAPTER V. AT THE PASTURE BARS: ELDER-BUSHES MAY HAVE STINGS
CHAPTER VI. JUNE
CHAPTER VII. MORNING: “SOME IN RAGS AND SOME IN TAGS AND SOME IN VELVET
CHAPTER VIII. GLAD AFTERNOON: THE GIRL BY THE BLUE TENT-POLE
CHAPTER IX. NIGHT: IT IS BAD LUCK TO SING BEFORE BREAKFAST
CHAPTER X. THE COURT-HOUSE BELL
CHAPTER XI. JOHN BROWN'S BODY
CHAPTER XII. JERRY THE TELLER
CHAPTER XIII. JAMES FISBEE
CHAPTER XIV. A RESCUE
CHAPTER XV. NETTLES
CHAPTER XVI. PRETTY MARQUISE
CHAPTER XVII. HELEN'S TOAST
CHAPTER XVIII. THE TREACHERY OF H. FISBEE
CHAPTER XIX. THE GREAT HARKLESS COMES HOME
CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CAME TO STAY
There is a fertile stretch of flat lands in Indiana where unagrarian Eastern travellers, glancing from car-windows, shudder and return their eyes to interior upholstery, preferring even the swaying caparisons of a Pullman to the monotony without. The landscape lies interminably level: bleak in winter, a desolate plain of mud and snow; hot and dusty in summer, in its flat lonesomeness, miles on miles with not one cool hill slope away from the sun. The persistent tourist who seeks for signs of man in this sad expanse perceives a reckless amount of rail fence; at intervals a large barn; and, here and there, man himself, incurious, patient, slow, looking up from the fields apathetically as the Limited flies by. Widely separated from each other are small frame railway stations—sometimes with no other building in sight, which indicates that somewhere behind the adjacent woods a few shanties and thin cottages are grouped about a couple of brick stores.
On the station platforms there are always two or three wooden packing-boxes, apparently marked for travel, but they are sacred from disturbance and remain on the platform forever; possibly the right train never comes along. They serve to enthrone a few station loafers, who look out from under their hat-brims at the faces in the car-windows with the languid scorn a permanent fixture always