Beadle's Dime Novels No. 131 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

1% THR WRECKERS DAUGHTER. unfits for that severe application which characterized our studics, friend Wetmore, in those merry days of the past. “After the two years I would desire him to be placed in some good mercantile house, where business is done in the old- fashioned yer k i.¢., with integrity and ona solid foundation. Of course I should esteem it fortunate if that house could be your own ; but do not ask it unless you need and would take such a person. That you will feel an interest.in my motherless boy, taking occasional account of his progress, his, health, manners, etc., and give him the benefit of fatherly advice—is that asking too much, old friend ? “It is very hard for me to give him up for so a time, the only child my Anna ever bore me ; but since it is for his good, I must forget myself. I tell you in advance that he has some wayward streaks running through his general good behavior ; but it is only wilfulness, not wickedness. “How is the little Katie of whom you have written me? A child yet, suppose. Give her a kiss from an old brown beau in Ceylon. “The visit of the Flying Cloud was opp She is such an elegant ship, so new and staunch, with so fine a crew, and sailing so direct for America, it gives me the chance for which I have been looking to get Oliver off. He is wild with excite- ment. Since he came, when he was a little fellow in frocks, he has never taken a long sea-vo He is ignorant of life outside Ceylon. I imagine he w ve many things to learn, and some curious things to unlearn, But my letter is getting long for a man who has forgotten all the sentiment of his col- lege days, and only uses a pen to sign invoices and columns of figures. “ As in the days of old lang syne, , “ Ever yours, “ 0. GivForD.” It certainly was not conducive to Mr. Wetmore’s peace of mind to think of the only son of his friend being on the Flying Cloud that night. He and Gifford had loved the same Anna in the days of their early youth, and Gifford had won her, only to lose her after a brief and happy union, and to be 80 afflicted by his loss as to go abroad to look after the inter- ests of his father’s foreign partnership, never to return to a country fall of such sweet and bitter memories. He was a prosy old widower, now, eating curry and drinking Madeira, and making money of the brown-skinned natives; but Wetmore always remembered him, as he was in the days of well to love. As for himself, he had found another Anna, - - 2