Southern States -- History -- 1865-1877 -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
After a few more questions as to the possible time of his return, Keith
left his card.
That evening Keith went to the address that Phrony had given him. It was
a small lodging-house of, perhaps, the tenth rate. The dowdy woman in
charge remembered a young woman such as he described. She was ill and
rather crazy and had left several weeks before. She had no idea where
she had gone. She did not know her name. Sometimes she called herself
"Miss Tripper," sometimes "Mrs. Wickersham."
Keith took a cab and drove to the detective agency where Dave Dennison
had his office. Keith told him why he had come, and Dave listened with
tightened lips and eyes in which the flame burned deeper and deeper.
"I'll find her," he said.
Having set Dennison to work, Keith next directed his steps toward the
commodious house to which the Rev. William H. Rimmon had succeeded,
along with the fashionable church and the fashionable congregation which
his uncle had left.
He was almost sure, from the name she had mentioned, that Mr. Rimmon had
performed the ceremony. Rimmon had from time to time connected his name
with matrimonial affairs which reflected little credit on him.
From the time Mr. Rimmon had found his flattery and patience rewarded,
the pulpit from which Dr. Little had for years delivered a well-weighed,
if a somewhat dry, spiritual pabulum had changed.
Mr. Rimmon knew his congregation too well to tax their patience with any
such doctrinal sermons as his uncle had been given to. He treated his
people instead to pleasant little discourses which were as much like
Epictetus and Seneca as St. John or St. Paul.
Fifteen minutes was his limit,--eighteen at the outside,--weighed out
like a ration. Doubtless, Mr. Rimmon had his own idea of doing good. His
assistants worked hard in back streets and trod the dusty byways,
succoring the small fry, while he stepped on velvet carpets and cast his
net for the larger fish.
Was not Dives as well worth saving as Lazarus--and better worth it for
Rimmon's purposes! And surely he was a more agreeable dinner-companion.
Besides, nothing was really proved against Dives; and the crumbs from
his table fed many a Lazarus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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