Old Crossfire

This issue contains four speaker anthologies and sample excerpts from a serialized frontier novella. The Dime Serio-Comic Speaker (No. 19), Dime Select Speaker (No. 20), Dime Funny Speaker (No. 21), and Dime Jolly Speaker (No. 22) each list dozens of monologues and dramatic pieces—comic dialogues like "How tew pik out a wife," moral recitations like "Thanatopsis," character sketches with dialect ("De filosofy ub fos"), and humorous anecdotes. Dime Dialogues (No. 26) offers short dramatic pieces for multiple performers. The catalog also advertises numerous other instructional volumes on etiquette, letter-writing, dancing, and fortune-telling. The featured serialized fiction, "Old Crossfire: The Trailers of the Everglades" by Capt. Charles Howard, follows a scout named Sam and a boy named Frank Nesbit returning to a Florida plantation ravaged by the "Mixed Riders" during the Indian Wars. The opening chapter describes their discovery of the Grant mansion's dining room, where evidence of massacre—blood-stained dishes and washboarding—suggests Indian attack, though the narrative trails off.