Snow Bird

This is a catalog for Beadle and Adams publishers featuring their "Dime" series of hand-books and educational materials. The primary content shown is the opening of Snow Bird; or, The Trapper's Child, a serialized novel by the author of frontier works including About on the Plains and The Gray Scout.

The story begins in St. Louis during the early fur-trade era. Jeannette Barteau, a refined young woman educated at the fashionable Madame Pinette's boarding school, meets her father for the first time in years—a rough mountaineer named Jean Barteau who arrives in ill-fitting civilization clothes and moccasins. He reveals he invested in her education expecting repayment through marriage: he demands she wed the wealthy James Musson, whom she finds odious. Though terrified, Jeannette suppresses her protest and appears to submit to her father's will, though her expression suggests inner defiance.