

E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Josephine Paolucci, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team



SEVENOAKS

A Story of Today

by

J.G. HOLLAND

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Published by Arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons

1875







CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.

  Which tells about Sevenoaks, and how Miss Butterworth passed one of
  her evenings

  CHAPTER II.

  Mr. Belcher carries his point at the town-meeting, and the poor are
  knocked down to Thomas Buffum

  CHAPTER III.

  In which Jim Fenton is introduced to the reader and introduces himself to
  Miss Butterworth

  CHAPTER IV.

  In which Jim Fenton applies for lodgings at Tom Buffum's boarding-house,
  and finds his old friend

  CHAPTER V.

  In which Jim enlarges his accommodations and adopts a violent method
  of securing boarders

  CHAPTER VI.

  In which Sevenoaks experiences a great commotion, and comes to the
  conclusion that Benedict has met with foul play

  CHAPTER VII.

  In which Jim and Mike Conlin pass through a great trial and come out
  victorious

  CHAPTER VIII.

  In which Mr. Belcher visits New York, and becomes the Proprietor of
  "Palgrave's Folly."

  CHAPTER IX.

  Mrs. Talbot gives her little dinner party, and Mr. Belcher makes an
  exceedingly pleasant acquaintance

  CHAPTER X.

  Which tells how a lawyer spent his vacation in camp, and took home a
  specimen of game that he had never before found in the woods

  CHAPTER XI.

  Which records Mr. Belcher's connection with a great speculation and
  brings to a close his residence in Sevenoaks

  CHAPTER XII.

  In which Jim enlarges his plans for a house, and completes his plans for
  a house-keeper

  CHAPTER XIII.

  Which introduces several residents of Sevenoaks to the Metropolis and
  a new character to the reader

  CHAPTER XIV.

  Which tells of a great public meeting in Sevenoaks, the burning in effigy
  of Mr. Belcher, and that gentleman's interview with a reporter

  CHAPTER XV.

  Which tells about Mrs. Dillingham's Christmas and the New Year's
  Reception at the Palgrave Mansion

  CHAPTER XVI.

  Which gives an account of a voluntary and an involuntary visit of Sam
  Yates to Number Nine

  CHAPTER XVII.

  In which Jim constructs two happy-Davids, raises his hotel, and dismisses
  Sam Yates

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  In which Mrs. Dillingham makes some important discoveries, but fails to
  reveal them to the reader

  CHAPTER XIX.

  In which Mr. Belcher becomes President of the Crooked Valley Railroad,
  with large "Terminal facilities," and makes an adventure into a
  long-meditated crime

  CHAPTER XX.

  In which "the little woman" announces her engagement to Jim Fenton
  and receives the congratulations of her friends

  CHAPTER XXI.

  In which Jim gets the furniture into his house, and Mike Conlin gets
  another installment of advice into Jim

  CHAPTER XXII.

  In which Jim gets married, the new hotel receives its mistress, and
  Benedict confers a power of attorney

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  In which Mr. Belcher expresses his determination to become a "founder,"
  but drops his noun in fear of a little verb of the same name

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  Wherein the General leaps the bounds of law, finds himself in a new
  world, and becomes the victim of his friends without knowing it

  CHAPTER XXV.

  In which the General goes through a great many trials, and meets at last
  the one he has so long anticipated

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  In which the case of "Benedict _vs._ Belcher" finds itself in court, an
  interesting question of identity is settled, and a mysterious
  disappearance takes place

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  In which Phipps is not to be found, and the General is called upon to do
  his own lying

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  In which a heavenly witness appears who cannot be cross-examined, and
  before which the defense utterly breaks down

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  Wherein Mr. Belcher, having exhibited his dirty record, shows a clean
  pair of heels

  CHAPTER XXX.

  Which gives the history of an anniversary, presents a tableau, and drops
  the curtain





CHAPTER I.

WHICH TELLS ABOUT SEVENOAKS, AND HOW MISS BUTTERWORTH PASSED ONE OF HER
EVENINGS.


Everybody has seen Sevenoaks, or a hundred towns so much like it, in
most particulars, that a description of any one of them would present it
to the imagination--a town strung upon a stream, like beads upon a
thread, or charms upon a chain. Sevenoaks was richer in chain than
charms, for its abundant water-power was only partially used. It
plunged, and roared, and played, and sparkled, because it had not half
enough to do. It leaped down three or four cataracts in passing through
the village; and, as it started from living springs far northward among
the woods and mountains, it never failed in its supplies.

Few of the people of Sevenoaks--thoughtless workers, mainly--either knew
or cared whence it came, or whither it went. They knew it as "The
Branch;" but Sevenoaks was so far from the trunk, down to which it sent
its sap, and from which it received no direct return, that no
significance was attached to its name. But it roared all day, and roared
all night, summer and winter alike, and the sound became a part of the
atmosphere. Resonance was one of the qualities of the oxygen which the
people breathed, so that if, at any midnight moment, the roar had been
suddenly hushed, they would have waked with a start and a sense of
suffocation, and leaped from their beds.

Among the charms that dangled from this liquid chain--depending from the
vest of a landscape which ended in a ruffle of woods toward the north,
overtopped by the head of a mountain--was a huge factory that had been
added to from time to time, as necessity demanded, until it had become
an imposing and not uncomely pile. Below this were two or three
dilapidated saw-mills, a grist-mill in daily use, and a fulling-mill--a
remnant of the old times when homespun went its pilgrimage to town--to
be fulled, colored, and dressed--from all the sparsely settled country
around.

On a little plateau by the side of The Branch was a row of stores and
dram-shops and butchers' establishments. Each had a sort of square,
false front, pierced by two staring windows and a door, that reminded
one of a lion _couchant_--very large in the face and very thin in the
flank. Then there were crowded in, near the mill, little rows of
one-story houses, occupied entirely by operatives, and owned by the
owner of the mill. All the inhabitants, not directly connected with the
mill, were as far away from it as they could go. Their houses were set
back upon either acclivity which rose from the gorge that the stream had
worn, dotting the hill-sides in every direction. There was a clumsy
town-hall, there were three or four churches, there was a high school
and a low tavern. It was, on the whole, a village of importance, but the
great mill was somehow its soul and center. A fair farming and grazing
country stretched back from it eastward and westward,