Beasley's Christmas Party

The maple-bordered street was as still as a country Sunday; so quiet that there seemed an echo to my footsteps. It was four o''clock in the morning; clear October moonlight misted through the thinning foliage to the shadowy sidewalk and lay like a tr... Read more

The maple-bordered street was as still as a country Sunday; so quiet that there seemed an echo to my footsteps. It was four o''clock in the morning; clear October moonlight misted through the thinning foliage to the shadowy sidewalk and lay like a transparent silver fog upon the house of my admiration, as I strode along, returning from my first night''s work on the "Wainwright Morning Despatch."I had already marked that house as the finest (to my taste) in Wainwright, though hitherto, on my excursions to this metropolis, the state capital, I was not without a certain native jealousy that Spencerville, the county-seat where I lived, had nothing so good. Now, however, I approached its purlieus with a pleasure in it quite unalloyed, for I was at last myself a resident (albeit of only one day''s standing) of Wainwright, and the house-though I had not even an idea who lived there-part of my possessions as a citizen. Moreover, I might enjoy the warmer pride of a next-door-neighbor, for Mrs. Apperthwaite''s, where I had taken a room, was just beyond. Less