Project Gutenberg's The Gentleman From Indiana, by Booth Tarkington

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Title: The Gentleman From Indiana

Author: Booth Tarkington

Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9659]
Posting Date: June 16, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA ***

Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer

THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA

By Booth Tarkington

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CAME TO STAY
II. THE STRANGE LADY
III. LONESOMENESS
IV. THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER
V. AT THE PASTURE BARS: ELDER-BUSHES MAY HAVE STINGS
VI. JUNE
VII. MORNING: "SOME IN RAGS AND SOME IN TAGS AND SOME IN VELVET GOWNS"
VIII. GLAD AFTERNOON: THE GIRL BY THE BLUE TENT POLE
IX. NIGHT: IT IS BAD LUCK TO SING BEFORE BREAKFAST
X. THE COURT-HOUSE BELL
XI. JOHN BROWN'S BODY
XII. JERRY THE TELLER
XIII. JAMES FISBEE
XIV. A RESCUE
XV. NETTLES
XVI. PRETTY MARQUISE
XVII. HELEN'S TOAST
XVIII. THE TREACHERY OF H. FISBEE
XIX. THE GREAT HARKLESS COMES HOME

CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG MAN WHO CAME TO STAY

There is a fertile stretch of flat lands in Indiana where unagrarian
Eastern travellers, glancing from car-windows, shudder and return their
eyes to interior upholstery, preferring even the swaying caparisons of a
Pullman to the monotony without. The landscape lies interminably level:
bleak in winter, a desolate plain of mud and snow; hot and dusty in
summer, in its flat lonesomeness, miles on miles with not one cool hill
slope away from the sun. The persistent tourist who seeks for signs of
man in this sad expanse perceives a reckless amount of rail fence; at
intervals a large barn; and, here and there, man himself, incurious,
patient, slow, looking up from the fields apathetically as the Limited
flies by. Widely separated from each other are small frame railway
stations--sometimes with no other building in sight, which indicates
that somewhere behind the adjacent woods a few shanties and thin
cottages are grouped about a couple of brick stores.

On the station platforms there are always two or three wooden
packing-boxes, apparent