A Certain Rich Man

A Certain Rich Man

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White
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Title: A Certain Rich Man
Author: William Allen White

Release Date: June 26, 2006 [eBook #18684]
Language: English
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RICH MAN***
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A CERTAIN RICH MAN

by
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE
Author of "Stratagems and Spoils," "The Court of Boyville," etc.

The MacMillan Company New York · Boston · Chicago Atlanta · San
Francisco
MacMillan & Co., Limited London · Bombay · Calcutta Melbourne
The Macmillan Co. Of Canada, Ltd. Toronto
A Certain Rich Man
New York The MacMillan Company 1909 All rights reserved
Copyright, 1909, By The MacMillan Company. Set up and electrotyped.
Published July, 1909. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick &
Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
1
CHAPTER II
15
CHAPTER III
30
CHAPTER IV

51
CHAPTER V
59
CHAPTER VI
72
CHAPTER VII
84
CHAPTER VIII
95
CHAPTER IX
105
CHAPTER X
118
CHAPTER XI
135
CHAPTER XII
150
CHAPTER XIII
165

CHAPTER XIV
176
CHAPTER XV
193
CHAPTER XVI
206
CHAPTER XVII
227
CHAPTER XVIII
243
CHAPTER XIX
262
CHAPTER XX
275
CHAPTER XXI
294
CHAPTER XXII
304
CHAPTER XXIII

319
CHAPTER XXIV
334
CHAPTER XXV
339
CHAPTER XXVI
355
CHAPTER XXVII
365
CHAPTER XXVIII
382
CHAPTER XXIX
405
CHAPTER XXX
428

BOOK I
A CERTAIN RICH MAN
CHAPTER I

The woods were as the Indians had left them, but the boys who were
playing there did not realize, until many years afterwards, that they had
moved in as the Indians moved out. Perhaps, if these boys had known
that they were the first white boys to use the Indians' playgrounds, the
realization might have added zest to the make-believe of their games;
but probably boys between seven and fourteen, when they play at all,
play with their fancies strained, and very likely these little boys,
keeping their stick-horse livery-stable in a wild-grape arbour in the
thicket, needed no verisimilitude. The long straight hickory
switches--which served as horses--were arranged with their butts on a
rotting log, whereon some grass was spread for their feed. Their string
bridles hung loosely over the log. The horsemen swinging in the vines
above, or in the elm tree near by, were preparing a raid on the stables of
other boys, either in the native lumber town a rifle-shot away or in
distant parts of the woods. When the youngsters climbed down, they
straddled their hickory steeds and galloped friskily away to the creek
and drank; this was part of the rites, for tradition in the town of their
elders said that whoever drank of Sycamore Creek water immediately
turned horse thief. Having drunk their fill at the ford, they waded it and
left the stumpy road, plunging into the underbrush, snorting and puffing
and giggling and fussing and complaining--the big ones at the little
ones and the little ones at the big ones--after the manner of mankind.
When they had gone perhaps a half-mile from the ford, one of the little
boys, feeling the rag on his sore heel slipping and letting the rough
woods grass scratch his raw flesh, stopped to tie up the rag. He was far
in the rear of the pack when he stopped, and the boys, not heeding his
blat, rushed on and left him at the edge of a thicket near a deep-rutted
road. His cry became a whimper and his whimper a sniffle as he
worked with the rag; but the little fingers were clumsy, and a heel is a
hard place to cover, and the sun was hot on his back; so he took the rag
in one hand and his bridle in the other, and limped on his stick horse
into the thick shade of a lone oak tree that stood beside the wide dusty
road. His sore did not bother him, and he sat with his back against the
tree for a while, flipping the rag and making figures in the dust with the
pronged tail of his horse. Then his hands were still, and as he ran from
tune to tune with improvised interludes, he droned a song of his

prowess. Sometimes he sang words and sometimes he sang thoughts.
He sank farther and farther down and looked up into the tree and ceased
his song, chirping instead a stuttering falsetto trill, not unlike a cricket's,
holding his breath as long