The Deluge

The Deluge [with accents]

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Title: The Deluge
Author: DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7832] [This file was first posted on
May 20, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
DELUGE ***

THE DULUGE
BY
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS
Author of The Cost, The Plum Tree, The Social Secretary, etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GEORGE GIBBS
[Illustration]

CONTENTS
I MR. BLACKLOCK II IN THOSE DAYS AROSE KINGS III CAME
A WOMAN IV A CANDIDATE FOR "RESPECTABILITY" V
DANGER SIGNALS VI OF "GENTLEMEN" VII BLACKLOCK
GOES INTO TRAINING VIII ON THE TRAIL OF LANGDON IX
LANGDON AT HOME X TWO "PILLARS OF SOCIETY" XI
WHEN A MAN IS NOT A MAN XII ANITA XIII "UNTIL
TO-MORROW" XIV FRESH AIR IN A GREENHOUSE XV SOME
STRANGE LAPSES OF A LOVER XVI TRAPPED AND TRIMMED
XVII A GENTEEL "HOLD-UP" XVIII ANITA BEGINS TO BE
HERSELF XIX A WINDFALL FROM "GENTLEMAN JOE" XX A
BREATHING SPELL XXI MOST UNLADYLIKE XXII MOST
UNGENTLEMANLY XXIII "SHE HAS CHOSEN" XXIV
BLACKLOCK ATTENDS FAMILY PRAYERS XXV "MY WIFE
MUST" XXVI THE WEAK STRAND XXVII A CONSPIRACY
AGAINST ANITA XXVIII BLACKLOCK SEES A LIGHT XXIX A
HOUSEWARMING XXX BLACKLOCK OPENS FIRE XXXI
ANITA'S SECRET XXXII LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACE
XXXIII MRS. LANGDON MAKES A CALL XXXIV "MY RIGHT
EYE OFFENDS ME" XXXV "WILD WEEK" XXXVI "BLACK

MATT'S" TRIUMPH

I
MR. BLACKLOCK
When Napoleon was about to crown himself--so I have somewhere
read--they submitted to him the royal genealogy they had faked up for
him. He crumpled the parchment and flung it in the face of the chief
herald, or whoever it was. "My line," said he, "dates from Montenotte."
And so I say, my line dates from the campaign that completed and
established my fame--from "Wild Week."
I shall not pause to recite the details of the obscurity from which I
emerged. It would be an interesting, a romantic story; but it is a
familiar story, also, in this land which Lincoln so finely and so fully
described when he said: "The republic is opportunity."
One fact only: I did not take the name Blacklock.
I was born Blacklock, and christened Matthew; and my hair's being
very black and growing so that a lock of it often falls down the middle
of my forehead is a coincidence. The malicious and insinuating story
that I used to go under another name arose, no doubt, from my having
been a bootblack in my early days, and having let my customers
shorten my name into Matt Black. But, as soon as I graduated from
manual labor, I resumed my rightful name and have borne it--I think I
may say without vanity--in honor to honor.
Some one has written: "It was a great day for fools when modesty was
made a virtue." I heartily subscribe to that. Life means action; action
means self-assertion; self-assertion rouses all the small, colorless
people to the only sort of action of which they are capable--to sneering
at the doer as egotistical, vain, conceited, bumptious and the like. So be
it! I have an individuality, aggressive, restless and, like all such
individualities, necessarily in the lime-light; I have from the beginning
lost no opportunity to impress that individuality upon my time. Let
those who have nothing to advertise, and those less courageous and less
successful than I at advertisement, jeer and spit. I ignore them. I make
no apologies for egotism. I think, when my readers have finished, they
will demand none. They will see that I had work to do, and that I did it
in the only way an intelligent man ever tries to do his work--his own
way, the way natural to him!

Wild Week! Its cyclones, rising fury on fury to that historic climax of
chaos, sing their mad song in my ears again as I