Old Ebenezer

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Old Ebenezer, by Opie Read

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Title: Old Ebenezer
Author: Opie Read

Release Date: October 27, 2007 [eBook #23215]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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OLD EBENEZER.
* * * * *
OPIE READ'S SELECT WORKS
Old Ebenezer The Jucklins My Young Master A Kentucky Colonel On the Suwanee River A Tennessee Judge
Works of Strange Power and Fascination
Uniformly bound in extra cloth, gold tops, ornamental covers, uncut edges, six volumes in a box,
$6.00
Sold separately, $1.00 each.
* * * * *
[Illustration: couple sitting under tree]
Opie Read's Select Works
OLD EBENEEZER
by
OPIE READ
Author of "My Young Master," "The Jucklins," "On the Suwanee River," "A Kentucky Colonel," "A Tennessee Judge," "The Colossus," "Emmett Bonlore," "Len Gansett," "The Tear in the Cup and Other Stories," "The Wives of the Prophet."
Illustrated

Chicago Laird & Lee, Publishers
Copyrighted 1897, by Wm. H. Lee. (All Rights Reserved.)

CONTENTS
Chapter Page
1. Sam Lyman 7
2. The Noted Advocate 14
3. The Timely Oracle 21
4. A Fog Between Them 38
5. The Belle of the Town 49
6. Humbled Into the Dust 55
7. The Wedding Breakfast 63
8. Suppressing the News 70
9. At Church 83
10. The Old Fellow Laughed 91
11. In the Lantern Light 100
12. Wanted to Dream 112
13. In a Magazine 122
14. Nothing Remarkable in It 132
15. Must Leave the Town 143
16. Sawyer's Plan 155
17. At the Creek 164
18. At the Wagon Maker's Shop 174
19. A Restless Night 181
20. Afraid in the Dark 191
21. With Old Jasper 197
22. The "Boosy" 207
23. After an Anxious Night 222
24. At Mt. Zion 235
25. At Nancy's Home 249
26. Out in the Dark 262
27. The Revenge 270
28. A Gentleman Mule-Buyer 278
29. Gone Away 294
30. The Home 306
31. There Came a Check 316
32. Laughed at His Weakness 326
33. The Petition 338

OLD EBENEZER.
CHAPTER I.
SAM LYMAN.
In more than one of the sleepy neighborhoods that lay about the drowsy town of Old Ebenezer, Sam Lyman had lolled and dreamed. He had come out of the keen air of Vermont, and for a time he was looked upon as a marvel of energy, but the soft atmosphere of a southwestern state soothed the Yankee worry out of his walk, and made him content to sit in the shade, to wait for the other man to come; and, as the other man was doing the same thing, rude hurry was not a feature of any business transaction. Of course the smoothing of Lyman's Yankee ruffles had taken some time. He had served as cross-tie purchaser for a new railway, had kept books and split slabs for kindling wood at a saw mill; then, as an assistant to the proprietor of a cross-roads store, he had counted eggs and bargained for chickens, with a smile for a gingham miss and a word of religious philosophy for the dame in home-spun. But he was now less active, and already he had begun to long for easier employment; so he "took up" school at forty dollars a month. In the Ebenezer country, the school teacher is regarded as a supremely wise and hopelessly lazy mortal. He is expected to know all of earth, as the preacher is believed to know all of heaven, and when he has once been installed into this position, a disposition to get out of it is branded as a sacrilege. He has taken the pedagogic veil and must wear it. But Lyman was not satisfied with the respect given to this calling; he longed for something else, not of a more active nature, it is true, but something that might embrace a broader swing. The soft atmosphere had turned the edge of his physical energy, but his mind was eager and grasping. His history was that dear fallacy, that silken toga which many of us have wrapped about ourselves--the belief that a good score at college means immediate success out in the world. And he had worked desperately to finish his education, had taken care of horses and waited upon table at a summer resort in the White Mountains. His first great and cynical shock was to find that his "accomplishment" certificate was one of an enormous edition; that it meant comparatively nothing in the great brutal world of trade; that modesty was a drawback, and that gentleness was as weak as timidity. And repeated failures drove him from New England to a community where, it had