Poor White
CHAPTER I Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on the western shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town--called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"--was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans of the town were in the same state. The merchants, who ran their stores--poor tumble-down ramshackle affairs--on the credit system, could not get pay for the goods they handed out over their counters and the artisans, the shoemakers, carpenters and harnessmakers, could not get pay for the work they did. Only the town's two saloons prospered. The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the men of the town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drink life was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of getting drunk.
VISITOR FROM PLANET X
By VICTOR APPLETON II
Tom Swift Jr. and his associates at Swift
Enterprises wait breathlessly for what
may well be the most important scientific
event in history--the arrival of the
visitor from Planet X--a visitor in the
form of energy. But there are factions at
work determined to snatch the energy,
which Tom has named Exman, from the
young scientist-inventor's grasp. First,
a series of unexplainable, devastating
earthquakes threaten to destroy a good
portion of the earth, and Tom suspects the
Brungarian rebels who obviously would like
to capture Exman and use the space visitor
to further their own evil purposes.
With the security of Enterprises and Exman
at stake, Tom creates two of his greatest
inventions--a Quakelizor to counteract the
simulated earth tremors, and a container
or "body" to house the energy from outer
CHAPTER I Hugh McVey was born in a little hole of a town stuck on a mud bank on the western shore of the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. It was a miserable place in which to be born. With the exception of a narrow strip of black mud along the river, the land for ten miles back from the town--called in derision by river men "Mudcat Landing"--was almost entirely worthless and unproductive. The soil, yellow, shallow and stony, was tilled, in Hugh's time, by a race of long gaunt men who seemed as exhausted and no-account as the land on which they lived. They were chronically discouraged, and the merchants and artisans of the town were in the same state. The merchants, who ran their stores--poor tumble-down ramshackle affairs--on the credit system, could not get pay for the goods they handed out over their counters and the artisans, the shoemakers, carpenters and harnessmakers, could not get pay for the work they did. Only the town's two saloons prospered. The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the men of the town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drink life was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of getting drunk.