Beadle's New York Dime Library No. 300

# Museum Catalog Note

This dime novel from July 23, 1884 (Vol. XXIV, No. 300) features "Sport in Spectacles; or, The Bad Time at Bunco" by W.M.R. Eyster, a Western mining-camp tale. The serialized story opens with Edmund Farrell, a dying prospector newly arrived in the infant mining town of Bunco, dictating his will to lawyer Neil Bradley. Farrell entrusts his estate—including a valuable ore vein map—and guardianship of his two children to Hunter Browne, a capable frontiersman. After Farrell's death, Browne fends off legal challenges from Farrell's vindictive sister Mrs. Waring (who claims Farrell murdered her husband) and a detective named Prim seeking Farrell for an unrelated killing. The narrative then jumps twenty years: Bunco has transformed from placer mining to quartz operations. Browne, now a prosperous bachelor and mine operator, receives an arriving coach carrying various passengers, including the striking blue-eyed Miss Millie Vandeleur and an awkward Professor Elderberry, setting up further complications.