- Libros en formato MOBI -
Smoke
Bellew
In the
beginning he was Christopher Bellew. By the time
he was at college he had become Chris Bellew.
Later, in the Bohemian crowd of San Francisco,
he was called Kit Bellew. And in the end he was
known by no other name than Smoke Bellew. And
this history of the evolution of his name is the
history of his evolution. Nor would it have
happened had he not had a fond mother and an
iron uncle, and had he not received a letter
from Gillet Bellamy.
“I have just seen a copy of The Billow,” Gillet
wrote from Paris. “Of course O'Hara will succeed
with it. But he's missing some tricks.” Here
followed details in the improvement of the
budding society weekly. “Go down and see him.
Let him think they're your own suggestions.
Don't let him know they're from me. If you do,
he'll make me Paris correspondent, which I can't
afford, because I'm getting real money for my
stuff from the big magazines. Above all, don't
forget to make him fire that dub who's doing the
musical and art criticism. Another thing. San
Francisco has always had a literature of her own.
But she hasn't any now. Tell him to kick around
and get some gink to turn out a live serial, and
to put into it the real romance and glamour and
colour of San Francisco.” ...
 The
Mutiny of the Elsinore
From the first the voyage was going wrong.
Routed out of my hotel on a bitter March morning,
I had crossed Baltimore and reached the pier-end
precisely on time. At nine o’clock the tug was
to have taken me down the bay and put me on
board the Elsinore, and with growing irritation
I sat frozen inside my taxicab and waited. On
the seat, outside, the driver and Wada sat
hunched in a temperature perhaps half a degree
colder than mine. And there was no tug.
Possum, the fox-terrier puppy Galbraith had so
inconsiderately foisted upon me, whimpered and
shivered on my lap inside my greatcoat and under
the fur robe. But he would not settle down.
Continually he whimpered and clawed and
struggled to get out. And, once out and bitten
by the cold, with equal insistence he whimpered
and clawed to get back.
His unceasing plaint and movement was anything
but sedative to my jangled nerves. In the first
place I was uninterested in the brute. He meant
nothing to me. I did not know him. Time and
again, as I drearily waited, I was on the verge
of giving him to the driver. Once, when two
little girls—evidently the wharfinger’s
daughters—went by, my hand reached out to the
door to open it so that I might call to them and
present them with the puling little wretch...

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