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Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
A Strange DISCOVERY
By
Charles Romyn Dake
(1889)
The FIRST Chapter
It was once my good fortune to assist in a discovery of some importanceto lovers of literature, and to searchers after the new and wonderful.As nearly a quarter of a century has since elapsed, and as two othersshared in the discovery, it may seem to the reader strange that thegeneral public has been kept in ignorance of an event apparently so fullof interest. Yet this silence is quite explicable; for of the threeparticipants none has heretofore written for publication; and of my twoassociates, one is a quiet, retiring man, the other is erratic andforgetful.
It is also possible that the discovery did not at the time impresseither my companions or myself as having that importance and widespreadinterest which I have at last come to believe it really possesses. Inany view of the case, there are reasons, personal to myself, why it wasless my duty than that of either of the others to place on record thefacts of the discovery. Had either of them, in all these years, in everso brief a manner, done so, I should have remained forever silent.
The narrative which it is my purpose now to put in written form, I haveat various times briefly or in part related to one and another of myintimate friends; but they all mistook my facts for fancies, andgood-naturedly complimented me on my story-telling powers—which wascertainty not flattering to my qualifications as an historian.
With this explanation, and this extenuation of what some persons maythink an inexcusable and almost criminal delay, I shall proceed.
In the year 1877 I was compelled by circumstances to visit the States.At that time, as at the present, my home was near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.My father, then recently deceased, had left, in course of settlement inAmerica, business interests involving a considerable pecuniaryinvestment, of which I hoped a large part might be recovered. My lawyer,for reasons which seemed to me sufficient, advised that the act ofsettlement should not be delegated; and I decided to leave at once forthe United States. Ten days later I reached New York, where I remainedfor a day or two and then proceeded westward. In St. Louis I met some ofthe persons interested in my business. There the whole transaction tooksuch form that a final settlement depended wholly upon the agreementbetween a certain man and myself; but, fortunately for the fate of thisnarrative, the man was not in St. Louis. He was one of those wealthyso-called "kings" which abound in America—in this case a "coal king." Iwas told that he possessed a really palatial residence in St.Louis—where he did not dwell; and a less pretentious dwellingdirectly in the coal-fields, where, for the most of his time, he didreside. I crossed the Mississippi River into Southern Illinois, and verysoon found him. He was a plain, honest business man; we did not splithairs, and within a week I had in my pocket London exchange forsomething like £20,000, he had in his pocket a transfer of my interestin certain coal-fields and a certain railroad, and we were bothsatisfied.
And now, having explained how I came to be in surroundings to me sostrange, any further mention of business, or of money interests, shallnot, in the course of this narrative, again appear.
I had arrive