Roldan Castanada walked excitedly up and down the verandah of his father's house, his thumbs thrust into the red silk sash that was knotted about his waist, his cambric shirt open at the throat as if pulled impatiently apart; the soft grey sombrero on the back of his curly head making a wide frame for his dark, flushed, scowling face. There was nothing in the surroundings to indicate the cause of his disturbance. The great adobe house, its white sides and red tiles glaring in the bright December sun, would have been as silent as a tomb but for the rapid tramping of Roldan and the clank of his silver spurs on the pavement. On all sides the vast Rancho Los Palos Verdes cleft the horizon: Don Mateo Castanada was one of the wealthiest grandees in the Californias, and his sons could gallop all day without crossing the boundary line of their future possessions. The rancho was as level as mid-ocean in a calm; here and there a wood or river broke the sweep; thousands of cattle grazed. Now and again a mounted vaquero, clad in small-clothes vivified with silver trimmings, dashed amongst tossing horns, shouting and warning.

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Miss Thangue, who had never seen her friend's hand tremble among the teacups before, felt an edge on her mental appetite, stimulating after two monotonous years abroad. It was several minutes, however, before she made any effort to relieve her curiosity, for of all her patron-friends Victoria Gwynne required the most delicate touch. Flora had learned to be audacious without taking a liberty, which, indeed, was one secret of her success; but although she prided herself upon her reading of this enigma, whom even the ancestral dames of Capheaton looked down upon inspectively, she was never quite sure of her ground. She particularly wished to avoid mistakes upon the renewal of an intimacy kept alive by a fitful correspondence during her sojourn on the Continent. Quite apart from self-interest, she liked no one as well, and her curiosity was tempered by a warm sympathy and a genuine interest. It was this capacity for friendship, and her unlimited good-nature, that had saved her, penniless as she was, from the ignominious footing of the social parasite. The daughter of a clergyman in a Yorkshire village, and the playmate in childhood of the little girls of the castle near by, she had realized early in life that although pretty and well-bred, she was not yet sufficiently dowered by either nature or fortune to hope for a brilliant marriage; and she detested poverty. Upon her father's death she must earn her bread, and, reasoning that self-support was merely the marketing of one's essential commodity, and as her plump and indolent body was disinclined to privations of any sort, she elected the rôle of useful friend to fashionable and luxurious women. It was not an exalted niche to fill in life, but at least she had learned to fill it to perfection, and her ambitions were modest. Moreover, a certain integrity of character and girlish enthusiasm had saved her from the more corrosive properties of her anomalous position, and she was not only clever enough to be frankly useful without servility, but she had become so indispensable to certain of her friends, that although still blooming in her early forties, she would no more have deserted them for a mere husband than she would have renounced her comfortable and varied existence for the no less varied uncertainties of matrimony.

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"Talk. Talk. Talk.… Good lines and no action … said all … not even promising first act … eighth failure and season more than half over … rather be a playwright and fail than a critic compelled to listen to has-beens and would-bes trying to put over bad plays.… Oh, for just one more great first-night … if there's a spirit world why don't the ghosts of dead artists get together and inhibit bad playwrights from tormenting first-nighters?… Astral board of Immortals sitting in Unconscious tweaking strings until gobbets and sclerotics become gibbering idiots every time they put pen to paper?… Fewer first-nights but more joy … also joy of sending producers back to cigar stands.… Thank God, no longer a critic … don't need to come to first-nights unless I want … can't keep away … habit too strong … poor devil of a colyumist must forage … why did I become a columnist? More money. Money! And I once a rubescent socialist … best parlor type … Lord! I wish some one would die and leave me a million!" Clavering opened his weary eyes and glanced over the darkened auditorium, visualizing a mass of bored resentful disks: a few hopeful, perhaps, the greater number too educated in the theatre not to have recognized the heavy note of incompetence that had boomed like a muffled fog-horn since the rise of the curtain.

Product Description: Gertrude Atherton was a well known American novelist in the early 20th century, and many of her novels depict life in California during the time period. Her best known work, Black Oxen, is still widely read today.

The great author had realized one of the dreams of his ambitious youth, the possession of an ancestral hall in England. It was not so much the good American¿s reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing to consort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic appreciation of the mellowness, the dignity, the aristocratic aloofness of walls that have sheltered, and furniture that has embraced, generations and generations of the dead.

Product Description: Gertrude Atherton was a well known American novelist in the early 20th century, and many of her novels depict life in California during the time period. Her best known work, Black Oxen, is still widely read today.

Product Description: Gertrude Atherton was a well known American novelist in the early 20th century, and many of her novels depict life in California during the time period. Her best known work, Black Oxen, is still widely read today.

It was my original intention to write a biography of Alexander Hamilton in a more flexible manner than is customary with that method of reintroducing the dead to the living, but without impinging upon the territory of fiction.

If this little book reads more like a memoir than a systematic study of conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and was too much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable, for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statistical account of their remarkable work. In the first place, although it was my friend Owen Johnson who suggested this visit to France and personal investigation of the work of her women, I went with a certain enthusiasm, and the longer I remained the more enthusiastic I became. My idea in going was not to gratify my curiosity but to do what I could for the cause of France as well as for my own country by studying specifically the war-time work of its women and to make them better known to the women of America. The average American woman who never has traveled in Europe, or only as a flitting tourist, is firm in the belief that all Frenchwomen are permanently occupied with fashions or intrigue. If it is impossible to eradicate this impression, at least the new impression I hope to create by a recital at first hand of what a number of Frenchwomen (who are merely carefully selected types) are doing for their country in its present ordeal, should be all the deeper.

The long street rising and falling and rising again until its farthest crest high in the east seemed to brush the fading stars, was deserted even by the private watch-men that guarded the homes of the apprehensive in the Western Addition. Alexina darted across and into the shadows of the avenue that led up to her old-fashioned home, a relic of San Francisco's "early days," perched high on the steepest of the casual hills in that city of a hundred hills.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

Product Description: It was my original intention to write a biography of Alexander Hamilton in a more flexible manner than is customary with that method of reintroducing the dead to the living, but without impinging upon the territory of fiction. But after a visit to the British and Danish West Indies in search of the truth regarding his birth and ancestry, and after a wider acquaintance with the generally romantic character of his life, to say nothing of the personality of this most endearing and extraordinary of all our public men, the instinct of the novelist proved too strong; I no sooner had pen in hand than I found myself working in the familiar medium, although preserving the historical sequence...read more

Product Description: It was at Governor Alvarado's house in Monterey that Chonita first knew of Diego Estenega. I had told him much of her, but had never cared to mention the name of Estenega in the presence of an Iturbi y Moncada. Chonita came to Monterey to stand godmother to the child of Alvarado and of her friend Doña Martina, his wife...read more

A Novel of the Power of the German Women in Wartime.

Magdalena might have been thought the happiest girl in the world. Born into a family of great wealth, she has an ambitious but kindly father, Don Roberto Yorba, and a mother of New England extraction who manages the household in a practical and restrained manner. Yet she has been a quiet girl from the moment of her birth, when she was thought born dead; and her mixture of Spanish and New England blood gives her both looks and character she thinks outshined in every way by her vivacious and constant friend, Helena, from another of California's wealthiest families. And while a fortune has been made, Fortune does not always smile upon the Yorba house: so that as Magdalena moves into womanhood, the difficulties she must face are ones she must master with her own inner resources. Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948), author of such novels as The White Morning, Black Oxen, and What Dreams May Come, is best known for this sweeping novel of a young California.

Show Excerpt d himself with the indolent hauteur of a man of many grandfathers. And indeed, unless, perhaps, that this plaything, the world, was too small, he had little to complain of. Although a younger son, he had a large fortune in his own right, left him by an adoring grandmother who had died shortly before he had come of age, and with whom he had lived from infancy as adopted son and heir. This grandmother was the one woman who had ever shone upon his horizon whose disappearance he regretted; and he was wont to remark that he never again expected to find anything beneath a coiffure at once so brilliant, so fascinating, so clever, so altogether "filling" as his lamented relative. If he ever did he would marry and settle down as a highly respectable member of society, and become an M.P. and the owner of a winner of the Derby; but until then he would sigh away his tired life at the feet of beauty, Bacchus, or chance. "What is the matter, Hal?" asked Bective Hollington, coming up behind him. "Yawning so early in

Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (1857 – 1948) was an American writer. Her husband discouraged her writing and in 1882 when she published her first novel the family was scandalized. Atherton is best remembered for her California series of novels and short stories. Her stories feature strong heroines who pursue independent careers. The Splendid Idle Forties contains stories of old California including The Pearls of Loreto; The Ears of Twenty Americans; The Washtub Mail; The Conquest of Dona Jacoba; A Ramble with Eulogia; The Isle of Skulls; The Head of a Priest; La Perdida; Lukari's Story; Natalie Ivanhoff: A Memory of Fort Ross; The Vengeance of Padre Arroyo; The Bells of San Gabriel; and When the Devil was Well.

Product Description: Death and the Woman is a horror short story written by Gertrude Atherton and first published in 1892. Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (October 30, 1857 – June 14, 1948) was a prominent and prolific American author, many of whose novels are based in her home state, California...read more