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قراءة كتاب Port Argent A Novel

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Port Argent
A Novel

Port Argent A Novel

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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PORT ARGENT

A Novel

By Arthur Colton

With a Frontispiece by Eliot Keen

New York

Henry Holt And Company

1904

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IN MEMORIAM

C. W. WELLS



DEDICATED

TO

GEORGE COLTON






CONTENTS

CHAPTER I—PULSES

CHAPTER II—RICHARD THE SECOND

CHAPTER III—CAMILLA

CHAPTER IV—MUSCADINE STREET

CHAPTER V—TECUMSEH STREET

CHAPTER VI—ALCOTT AIDEE

CHAPTER VII—THE THIRD LAMP

CHAPTER VIII—MECHANICS

CHAPTER IX—HICKS

CHAPTER X—MACCLESFIELD'S BRIDGE

CHAPTER XI—THE BROTHERS

CHAPTER XII—AIDEE AND CAMILLLA

CHAPTER XIII—IN WHICH HICKS IS BUSY

CHAPTER XIV—IN WHICH HICKS COMES TO HIS REST

CHAPTER XV—HENNION AND SHAYS

CHAPTER XVI—CAMILLA GOES TO THE ASSEMBLY HALL

CHAPTER XVII—AIDEE—CAMILLA—HENNION

CHAPTER XVIII—T. M. SECOR—HENNION—CAMILLA

CHAPTER XIX—CONCLUSION








CHAPTER I—PULSES

PORT ARGENT is a city lying by a brown navigable river that gives it a waterway to the trade of the Lakes. No one knows why it grew there, instead of elsewhere on the banks of the Muscadine, with higher land and better convenience. One dim-eyed event leaped on the back of another, and the city grew.

In the Senate Chamber where accidents and natural laws meet in Executive Session or Committee of the Whole, and log-roll bills, there are no "press galleries," nor any that are "open to the public." Inferences have been drawn concerning its submerged politics, stakes laid on its issues, and lobbying attempted. What are its parties, its sub-committees? Does an administrative providence ever veto its bills, or effectively pardon the transgressors of any statute?

Fifty years ago the Honourable Henry Champney expected that the acres back of his large square house, on Lower Bank Street by the river, would grow in value, and that their growing values would maintain, or help to maintain, his position in the community, and show the over-powers to favour integrity and Whig principles. But the city grew eastward instead into the half-cleared forest, and the sons of small farmers in that direction are now the wealthy citizens. The increment of the small farmers and the decrement of Henry Champney are called by social speculators "unearned," implying that this kind of attempt to lobby a session of accidents and natural laws is, in general, futile.

Still, the acres are mainly built over. The Champney house stands back of a generous lawn with accurate paths. Trolley cars pass the front edge of the lawn. Beyond the street and the trolleys and sidewalks comes the bluff. Under the bluff is the tumult of the P. and N. freight-yards. But people in Port Argent have forgotten what Whig principles were composed of.

There in his square-cupolaed house, some years ago, lived Henry Champney with his sister, Miss Eunice, and his daughter, Camilla. Camilla was born to him in his middle life, and through her eyes he was beginning, late in his old age, to look curiously at the affairs of a new generation.

Wave after wave these generations follow each other. The forces of Champney's generation were mainly spent, its noisy questions and answers subsiding. It pleased him that he was able to take interest in the breakers that rolled over their retreat. He wondered at the growth of Port Argent.

The growth of Port Argent had the marks of that irregular and corrupt legislation of destiny. It had not grown like an architect-builded house, according to orderly plans. If some thoughtful observer had come to it once every decade of its seventy years, it might have seemed to his mind not so much a mechanic result of

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