Weekly graphic. [volume] (Kirksville, Adair Co., Missouri) 1880-1949, 1886-09-24
'''7-- = - -
Our New Story.

publication OF a new story. 1t Is
we'll written and will prove OF alb
sorbing interest to the general
reader. Not one of our readers
should miss the opening chapter
The following is brief outline of
the story:
In the Middle West" as its IT,
tie indicates, deals with several
representative phases of life in
the great region known rs the
Mississippi Valley. John Earl
ing, orphaned in Ohio when a
child, and about the tragedy of
whose orphanage clings a mys-
terry which is carried through the
story, is brought West by Joel
Whitney-a step-brother of his
murdered father and is made to
work out his destiny in OEen-
stone, town in Northern Him
ois. His inherited character is
almost ideal honesty, clinging
hard to its integrity, and laboring
on through the ciogging obstacles
OF our lax times to pure success.
By his side, in contrast, is led Jo-
el Whitney, successful business
man. His is strong figure;
gathering wealth with a kind of
lavish avarice, loving it for itself
and for the power lying in it, not
over-scrupulous as to his methods,
yet always keeping inside the law,
gradually fattening every way save
in good morals, becoming through
wealth the central figure of his
town and through the power
granted him drifting into politics
and carrying tho same loose prac-
tees there, schemes at last for
Congress, and drops dead when
the prize is all but in his grasp; q
life looking well on the surface,
but all for self, and destroyed by
modern over-exertion. For the
rest there is his virtue-affecting,
but shallow-hearted wife, his son
Harry, amiable, like his father,
but weakened by soft living and
amounting to little, like many an
other rich mans son; the Abso-
lom Heater, like John Earling
self-built, but of a different type,
honest, quick and humorously ret
icent; Julius Popp, the profiigate
lawyer, aud his family, drawn
with humor; old lawyer Wood
man, eccentric and affecting to
hate honesty, but secretly so low
ing it that he turns out John Ear
ling's benefactor: his daughter
Maud and Joel Whitney's silent
accountant, all helping to forward
the story in Openstone, while
Joyl Snaer. once respectable
bachelor, but secretly loving John
Earnings mother and instigating
the murder of his father, flies
from his conscience the world
over, only. to return at last, brok-
en-, old and dying, to find that his
unknown niece, Celeste Bright
the orphan-heroine supporting
herself in music school in Gin
cinnati-has brou ght back to John
Earling, through the gift of her
self and love, happiness and
much of the property that her
uncle's crime had Wrenched away
from him. Many lessons and
Western side-lights are employed
in the development of the story,
and the movement and interest
quickens until it eliminates at the
close.
The leading motives are, to
stimulate honesty by John Ear
ling's example; to discourage
moral looseness IN business and
politics by Joel Whitney's death;
to solve our inequality of condi-
ton by the human and consistent
method John Earling and Celeste
adopt of setting limit to their
wealth, and the care with which
we should forearm our daughters
against the villainies of designing
men, and the danger of leaving
them in ignorance as pictured in
the tragedy of the innocent Maun
Woodman's ruin and death; the
whole being woven together and
carried forward in a consistent
and absorbing narrative, spiced
with humor, witticism and color.