John Henry Smith A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life
THE CHARACTERS JOHN HENRY SMITH, who tells the story. Heir of his father, lives in Woodvale club house, devoted to golf, becomes interested in Wall Street, and falls in love with Grace Harding GRACE HARDING, only daughter of Robert L. Harding, visitor in Woodvale ROBERT L. HARDING, millionaire railway magnate, who first despises golf and then becomes infatuated with it MRS. HARDING, the matter-of-fact wife of the above JIM BISHOP, farmer near Woodvale, who knew Harding when the two were boys in Buckfield, Maine WILLIAM WALLACE, Bishop's hired man, later golf professional in Woodvale, and later something else OLIVE LAWRENCE, pupil to William Wallace
Not a leaf stirred, the wide purple roof of the sky was unbroken by
the healthy promise of a cloud from rim to rim, the splendid country,
teeming with its spring-time richness, lay in rank perfection everywhere;
and just as rank and sleek and passionless were those who owned it.
Why, even I, who yesterday was strong, began to come under the spell
of it. But yesterday the spirit of the old world was still strong
within me, yet how much things were now changing. The well-strung
muscles loosening, the heart beating a slower measure, the busy mind
drowsing off to listlessness. Was I, too, destined to become like these?
Was the red stuff in my veins to be watered down to pallid Martian sap?
Was ambition and hope to desert me, and idleness itself become laborious,
while life ran to seed in gilded uselessness? Little did I guess how
unnecessary my fears were, or of the incredible fairy tale of adventure
into which fate was going to plunge me.
Still engrossed the next morning by these thoughts, I decided I would
go to Hath. Hath was a man--at least they said so--he might sympathise
even though he could not help, and so, dressing finished, I went down
towards the innermost palace whence for an hour or two had come sounds
of unwonted bustle. Asking for the way occasionally from sleepy folk
lolling about the corridors, waiting as it seemed for their breakfasts
to come to them, and embarrassed by the new daylight, I wandered to
and fro in the labyrinths of that stony ant-heap until I chanced upon
a curtained doorway which admitted to a long chamber, high-roofed,
ample in proportions, with colonnades on either side separated from
THE CHARACTERS JOHN HENRY SMITH, who tells the story. Heir of his father, lives in Woodvale club house, devoted to golf, becomes interested in Wall Street, and falls in love with Grace Harding GRACE HARDING, only daughter of Robert L. Harding, visitor in Woodvale ROBERT L. HARDING, millionaire railway magnate, who first despises golf and then becomes infatuated with it MRS. HARDING, the matter-of-fact wife of the above JIM BISHOP, farmer near Woodvale, who knew Harding when the two were boys in Buckfield, Maine WILLIAM WALLACE, Bishop's hired man, later golf professional in Woodvale, and later something else OLIVE LAWRENCE, pupil to William Wallace