The Queen of Sheba / My Cousin the Colonel

The Queen of Sheba / My Cousin
the Colonel

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the Colonel
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Title: The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel

Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5705] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on August 12, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
QUEEN OF SHEBA ***

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THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA, AND MY COUSIN THE COLONEL
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
1907

CONTENTS
I. MARY
II. IN WHICH THERE IS A FAMILY JAR
III. IN WHICH MARY TAKES A NEW DEPARTURE
IV. THE ODD ADVENTURE WHICH BEFELL YOUNG LYNDE IN
THE HILL COUNTRY

V. CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER
VI. BEYOND THE SEA
VII. THE DENHAMS
VIII. FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI
IX. MONTANVERT
X. IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC
XI. FROM CHAMOUNI TO GENEVA
MY COUSIN THE COLONEL
"FOR BRAVERY ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE"

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

I
MARY
In the month of June, 1872, Mr. Edward Lynde, the assistant cashier
and bookkeeper of the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, found himself in a
position to execute a plan which he had long meditated in secret.
A statement like this at the present time, when integrity in a place of
trust has become almost an anomaly, immediately suggests a
defalcation; but Mr. Lynde's plan involved nothing more criminal than
a horseback excursion through the northern part of the State of New
Hampshire. A leave of absence of three weeks, which had been
accorded him in recognition of several years' conscientious service,
offered young Lynde the opportunity he had desired. These three weeks,
as already hinted, fell in the month of June, when Nature in New

Hampshire is in her most ravishing toilet; she has put away her winter
ermine, which sometimes serves her quite into spring; she has thrown a
green mantle over her brown shoulders, and is not above the coquetry
of wearing a great variety of wild flowers on her bosom. With her
sassafras and her sweet- brier she is in her best mood, as a woman in a
fresh and becoming costume is apt to be, and almost any one might
mistake her laugh for the music of falling water, and the agreeable
rustle of her garments for the wind blowing through the pine forests.
As Edward Lynde rode out of Rivermouth one morning, an hour or two
before anybody worth mention was moving, he was very well
contented with this world, though he had his grievances, too, if he had
chosen to think of them.
Masses of dark cloud still crowded the zenith, but along the eastern
horizon, against the increasing blue, lay a city of golden spires and
mosques and minarets--an Oriental city, indeed, such as is inhabited by
poets and dreamers and other speculative persons fond of investing
their small capital in such unreal estate. Young Lynde, in spite of his
prosaic profession of bookkeeper, had an opulent though as yet
unworked vein of romance running through his composition, and he
said to himself as he gave a slight twitch to the reins, "I'll put up there
to-night at the sign of the Golden Fleece, or may be I'll quarter myself
on one of those rich old merchants who used to do business with the
bank in the colonial days." Before he had finished speaking the city
was destroyed by a general conflagration; the round red sun rose slowly
above the pearl-gray ruins, and it was morning.
In his three years' residence at Rivermouth, Edward Lynde had never
chanced to see the town at so early an hour. The cobble-paved street
through which he was