een thirty-five and forty,
a born spinster but clinging to the hope of marriage as the only career
for women. Has a small and decreasing income. Affectedly feminine and
genuinely incompetent.

_Mrs. Harvey Herrington_.... President of the Woman's Club, the
Municipal League, Suffrage Society leader, wealthy, cultured and
possessing a sense of humor.

_Percival Pauncefoot Sheridan_.... Betty's brother, fifteen, commonly
called Pudge. Pink, pudgy, sensitive; always imposed upon, always
grouchy and too good-natured to assert himself.

_E. Eliot_.... Real estate agent (added in Chapter VI by Henry Kitchell
Webster).

_Benjamin Doolittle_.... A leader of his party, and somewhat careless
where he leads it. (Added in Anne O'Hagan's Chapter).

_Patrick Noonan_.... A follower of Doolittle.

Time.... The Present.

Place.... Whitewater, N. Y. A manufacturing town of from ten to fifteen
thousand inhabitants.

THE STURDY OAK

CHAPTER I. BY SAMUEL MERWIN

Genevieve Remington had been called beautiful. She was tall, with brown
eyes and a fine spun mass of golden-brown hair. She had a gentle smile,
that disclosed white, even teeth. Her voice was not unmusical. She
was twenty-three years old and possessed a husband who, though only
twenty-six, had already shown such strength of character and such
aptitude at the criminal branch of the law that he was now a candidate
for the post of district attorney on the regular Republican ticket.

The popular impression was that he would be elected hands down. His
address on Alexander Hamilton at the Union League Club banquet at
Hamilton City, twenty-five miles from Whitewater (with which smaller
city we are concerned in this narrative), had been reprinted in full
in the Hamilton City _Tribune_; and Mrs. Brewster-Smith reported that
former Congressman Hancock had compared it, not unfavorably, with
certain public utterances of the Honorable Elihu Root.

George Remington was an inch more than six feet tall, with sturdy
shoulders, a chin that gave every indication of stubborn strength, a
frank smile, and a warm, strong handclasp. He was connected by blood (as
well as by marriage) with five of the eight best families in Whitewater.
Mr. Martin Jaffry, George's uncle and sole inheritor of the great Jaffry
estate (and a bachelor), was known to favor his candidacy; was supposed,
indeed, to be a large contributor to the Remington campaign fund. In
fact, George Remington was a lucky