[Gutenberg 46945] • Rich Man, Poor Man

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1916. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... VI THE wayfarer familiar with the highways and byways of New York will recall that in one of the widest, the most select of the uptown side streets opening off Fifth Avenue there is a row of brownstone double dwellings of imposing grandeur and magnitude, and of the most incredible ugliness as well. Not even Mayfair in London can show worse; for that matter, neither can Unter den Linden or eveti Pittsburgh. A wide stairway with swollen stone balustrades guards the street front of each; and above these the houses themselves rise flatly, their fagades chiefly notable for their look of smug, solid respectability--that and a wide acreage of plate-glass windows. Formerly a vast variety of rococo tutti-frutti decoration in the stonecutter's best art ornamented these fronts; but today the weather, as well as a sluggish uneasiness awakening in the tenants' minds, has got rid of the most of it; so that now the houses look merely commonplace, merely rich. But be that as it may, this particular Christmas Eve it was to the largest, the richest, and most formidable of these dwellings that the Beeston limousine brought Bab. For Bab had come home. The ride, brief as it was, up the lighted, glittering Avenue, Bab felt she ever would remember with a vividness that not even time could mar. It was her first opportunity to get her mind in order. She a Beeston? She, the little boarding-house waif, heir to a goodly fortune? Bab felt she had only to say "Pouf!" to burst, to shatter into air the frail, evanescent fabric of that bubble! So many things had happened! So many, too, had happened all at once! The excitement fading now, she began to feel herself languid and oppressed. And yet, as she knew, the night's ordeal had scarcely begun. In a few minutes now she was to see her father's ...