Project Gutenberg's Thomas Jefferson Brown, By James Oliver Curwood

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Title: Thomas Jefferson Brown

Author: James Oliver Curwood

Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23181]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THOMAS JEFFERSON BROWN ***

Produced by David Widger

THOMAS JEFFERSON BROWN

By James Oliver Curwood

Copyright, The Frank A. Munsey Co

I

There are not many who will remember him as Thomas Jefferson Brown. For
ten years he had been mildly ashamed of himself, and out of respect for
people who were dead, and for a dozen or so who were living, he had the
good taste to drop his last name. The fact that it was only Brown didn't
matter.

"Tack Thomas Jefferson to Brown," he said, "and you've got a name that
sticks!"

It had an aristocratic sound; and Thomas Jefferson, with the Brown cut
off, was still aristocratic, when you came to count the red corpuscles
in him. In some sort of way he was related to two dead Presidents, three
dead army officers, a living college professor, and a few common people.
He was legitimately born to the purple, but fate had sent him off on a
curious ricochet in a game all of its own, and changed him from Thomas
Jefferson Brown into just plain Thomas Jefferson without the Brown.

He was one of those specimens who, when you meet them, somehow make you
feel there are a few lost kings of the earth, as well as lost lambs. He
was what we called a "first-sighter"--that is, you liked him the instant
you looked at him. You knew without further acquaintance that he was a
man whom you could trust with your money, your friendship--anything you
had. He was big, with a wholesome brown face, blond hair, and gray
eyes that seemed always to be laughing and twinkling, even when he was
hungry. He carried about with him a load of cheerfulness so big that it
was constantly spilling over on other people.

There was a time when Thomas Jefferson Brown had little white cards
with his name on them. That was when he went to college, and his lungs
weren't so good. It was then that some big doctor told him that if he
wanted to live to have grandchildren, the best thing