Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) * * * * * MARK GILDERSLEEVE. A Novel. BY JOHN S. SAUZADE. NEW YORK: _G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers._ LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO. M.DCCC.LXXIII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by JOHN S. SAUZADE, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Stereotyped at the WOMEN'S PRINTING HOUSE, 56, 58 and 60 Park Street, New York. MARK GILDERSLEEVE. I. Although of much importance as a manufacturing place, Belton is noted chiefly for the beautiful water-fall to which the town, in fact, owes its existence. Here the Passaic, interrupted in its placid flow by a rocky barrier, takes an abrupt turn, and plunges in a narrow sheet of foam adown a deep chasm, formed in one of Nature's throes ages ago, and then with wild swirls rushes angrily over a rocky bed, until spent and quiet it skirts the town, and winds away appeased and pellucid--despite the murky drain of dye-houses--through woodlands, fields, and pastures green. Ere reaching the cataract, however, the river is tapped by a canal which serves to feed the flumes that run the many mills of Belton; and through this race-way the diverted waters speed on their busy errand, starting cumbersome overshot, undershot, breast, and turbine wheels into action, that in their turn quicken into life the restless shuttle and whirling spindle. From the cliff, at the head of the cataract, one may completely overlook the town, a cheerful hive, compactly built, and consisting chiefly of long brick factories, with little belfries, and rows of small white wooden dwellings. The whole is neat and bright; no canopy of coal-smoke obscures the blue sky, and but an occasional tall chimney or jet of vapor is seen, for here steam is dethroned, and the cheaper motor reigns supreme.