Chapter I: Foreword

The wanderers of earth turned to her--outcast of the older lands-- With a promise and hope in their pleading, and she reached them pitying hands; And she cried to the Old-World cities that drowse by the Eastern main: "Send me your weary, house-worn broods and I'll send you Men again! Lo, here in my wind-swept reaches, by my marshalled peaks of snow, Is room for a larger reaping than your o'ertilled fields can grow. Seed of the Main Seed springing to stature and strength in my sun, Free with a limitless freedom no battles of men have won," For men, like the grain of the corn fields, grow small in the huddled crowd, And weak for the breath of spaces where a soul may speak aloud; For hills, like stairways to heaven, shaming the level track, And sick with the clang of pavements and the marts of the trafficking pack. Greatness is born of greatness, and breadth of a breadth profound; The old Antaean fable of strength renewed from the ground Was a human truth for the ages; since the hour of the Edenbirth That man among men was strongest who stood with his feet on the earth!

SHARLOT MABRIDTH HALL.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. The Second Generation Is Removed

II. How the First Generation Once Righted Itself

III. Billy Brue Finds His Man

IV. The West Against the East

V. Over the Hills

VI. A Meeting and a Clashing

VII. The Rapid-fire Lorgnon Is Spiked

VIII. Up Skiplap Canyon

IX. Three Letters, Private and Confidential

X. The Price of Averting a Scandal

XI. How Uncle Peter Bines Once Cut Loose

XII. Plans for the Journey East

XIII. The Argonauts Return to the Rising Sun

XIV. Mr. Higbee Communicates Some Valuable Information

XV. Some Light With a Few Side-lights

XVI. With the Barbaric Hosts

XVII. The Patricians Entertain

XVIII. The Course of True Love at a House Party

XIX. An Afternoon Stroll and an Evening Catastrophe

XX. Doctor Von Herslich Expounds the Hightower Hotel and Certain Allied Phenomena

XXI. The Diversions of a Young Multi-millionaire

XXII. The Distressing Adventure of Mrs. Bines

XXIII. The Summer Campaign Is Planned

XXIV. The Sight of a New Beauty, and Some Advice from Higbee

XXV. Horace Milbrey Upholds the Dignity of His House

XXVI. A Hot Day in New York, with News of an Interesting Marriage

XXVII. A Sensational Turn in the Milbrey Fortunes

XXVIII. Uncle Peter Bines Comes to Town With His Man

XXIX. Uncle Peter Bines Threatens to Raise Something

XXX. Uncle Peter Inspires His Grandson to Worthy Ambitions

XXXI. Concerning Consolidated Copper and Peter Bines as Matchmakers

XXXII. Devotion to Business and a Chance Meeting

XXXIII. The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street

XXXIV. How the Chinook Came to Wall Street

XXXV. The News Broken, Whereupon an Engagement is Broken

XXXVI. The God in the Machine

XXXVII. The Departure of Uncle Peter--And Some German Philosophy

XXXVIII. Some Phenomena Peculiar to Spring

XXXIX. An Unusual Plan of Action Is Matured

XL. Some Rude Behaviour, of Which Only a Western Man Could Be Guilty

XLI. The New Argonauts

ILLUSTRATIONS

"The fair and sometimes uncertain daughter of the house of Milbrey"

"'Well, Billy Brue,--what's doin'?'"

"The spell was broken"

"'Why, you'd be Lady Casselthorpe, with dukes and counts takin' off their crowns to you'"

"'Remember that saying of your pa's, "it takes all kinds of fools to make a world"'"

"'Say it that way--" Miss Milbrey is engaged with Mr. Bines, and can't see you"'"

THE SPENDERS