General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1910 Original Publisher: The Century Co. Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: VII THE DESCENT OF BLANCHE BRACTON, from the point of view of the theatrical agent, was a minstrel town. The only form of amusement, however, that actually succeeded there was the circus. An optimistic professor from Collamore College had attempted a series of popular, elevating lectures, New Lights on Napoleon, but Maginnis, who received a dollar for ushering, was the only male person present except the lecturer. The professor waited twenty minutes, encouraged by Maginnis, with the hope that another lady was coming but the moving figure down the road proved to be a cow. Colonel Grayson’s daughter Blanche believed that if the people of Bracton could be met on their ground, they might be elevated. She was still at the new convent in Bracton, the prioress of which was Mother Juliet and the portress that Sister Margaret who had saved the soul of Sexton Maginnis. She was engaged in graduate courses in the philosophy of poetry (Professor MacNiall of Collamore College, three hours a week), and music (Sister Viola, sixteen hours a week, with a metronome and soundless clavier). Colonel Grayson, a Maryland gentleman of the old school, who had served in the Confederate Army at a tender age, and afterwards in the Papal Zouaves, was the only summer boarder at the Curtice Place, where Mary Ann Maginnis was chatelaine. He was waiting until Blanche finished her education, to take up his residence in the Bishop’s town. Blanche Grayson held that if you approached the Italians of Bracton from the luminous…