Part 1 (1/2)

The St.u.r.dy Oak.

by Samuel Merwin, et al.

PREFACE

At a certain committee meeting held in the spring of 1916, it was agreed that fourteen leading American authors, known to be extremely generous as well as gifted, should be asked to write a composite novel.

As I was not present at this particular meeting, it was unanimously and joyously decided by those who were present that I should attend to the trivial details of getting this novel together.

It appeared that all I had to do was:

First, to persuade each of the busy authors on the list to write a chapter of the novel.

Second, to keep steadily on their trails from the moment they promised their chapters until they turned them in.

Third, to have the novel finished and published serially during the autumn Campaign of 1917.

The carrying out of these requirements has not been the childish diversion it may have seemed. Splendid team work, however, has made success possible.

Every author represented, every worker on the team, has gratuitously contributed his or her services; and every dollar realized by the serial and book publication of ”The St.u.r.dy Oak” will be devoted to the Suffrage Cause. But the novel itself is first of all a very human story of American life today. It neither unduly nor unfairly emphasizes the question of equal suffrage, and it should appeal to all lovers of good fiction.

Therefore, pausing only to wipe the beads of perspiration from our brows, we urge every one to buy this book!

ELIZABETH JORDAN.

NEW YORK.

_November_, 1917. CONTENTS

THE St.u.r.dY OAK

CHAPTER I. BY SAMUEL MERWIN

Genevieve Remington had been called beautiful. She was tall, with brown eyes and a fine spun ma.s.s 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 apt.i.tude 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 Hanc.o.c.k 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 st.u.r.dy 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 young man, a coming young man.

George and Genevieve had been married five weeks; this was their first day as master and mistress of the old Remington place on Sheridan Road.

Genevieve, that afternoon, was in the long living-room, trying out various arrangements of the flowers that had been sent in. There were a great many flowers. Most of them came from admirers of George. The Young Men's Republican Club, for one item, had sent eight dozen roses.

But Genevieve, still a-thrill with the magic of her five-weeks-long honeymoon, tremulously happy in the c.u.mulative proof that her husband was the n.o.blest, strongest, bravest man alive, felt only joy in his popularity.