With just the right flourish of his pen, author James Street takes his readers for a walk in the footsteps of the men and women who populated the small towns and piney woods of his beloved home state, Mississippi. Street turns his singular experiences into moving and thought provoking universal truths — seeing beyond tarnished exteriors to the treasures within, the enduring legacy of selflessness, the making of champions, and the capacity of all, no matter what age, no matter how humble, to find and lose love. Each story is introduced by a note from the author — gems of thought and background information that further enhance the timeless contents of this collection. These short stories were originally published in such magazines as Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, and The American Magazine. This collection includes the original short stories, The Biscuit Eater and Weep No More My Lady which were later expanded into two of Mr. Street's most famous and well-loved books. Included: • The Golden Key • In Full Glory Reflected • The Old Gordon Place • Weep No More, My Lady • Please Come Home, My Lady • Buck and Fo' Bits • The Crusaders • Pud'n and Tayme • They Know How • The Road To Gettysburg • All Out With Sherman • Set the Wild Echoes Flying • The Biscuit Eater • The House
Lonnie, and his friend Text, spend their days in the streams and woods of Mississippi poking sticks in doodlebug holes, looking for crawdad castles, and catching sweet stinker bugs for good luck, All the while they keenly observe Lonnie's father, Harve McNeil, train his champion bird dogs. After all they are born to it ― boys and bird dogs grow up together. They're hunters. It's in their blood. When one of the champion dogs has a litter of seven yelping, squirming pups, their dream comes true. They are given a dog of their own to raise and train. They bond instantly, beginning a journey of love and responsibility that hones their skills and challenges their characters. Yet the lineage of the dog is questionable and Lonnie's father wonders if the scrawny, wobbly-legged dog is a biscuit eater ― an ornery dog that won't hunt anything except his own biscuits; an animal that may have to be destroyed. James Street was a native of Mississippi and wrote about hunting dogs and the men and boys who trained them with insight and a genuine appreciation born only by those who lived it. After its publication in 1941, The Biscuit Eater rapidly became an American best-seller and was made into a film after the Second World War. Included in this digital copy are the pictures of Arthur Fuller, one of America's best known illustrator of dogs. For all readers whose eyes still light when tales of great bird-dog champions are told, this is a book for you.
The Abernathy family lives in rural Mississippi where folks farm cotton and grow vegetables and kitchens are filled with smells of sweet potato pie, muscadine preserves, and pickled grapes. Cupboards bulge with Octagon soap wrappers collected to trade for dishes, and shelves are lined with homemade cures for everything ― sulphur, molasses, quinine, calomel, and mutton suet. Life is serene and harmonious if folks follow the rules and heed natures' signals. Everyone knows, for example, that a morning shower, like an old person's dance, never lasts long, or that high birds and high smoke mean good plowing weather. Some of the most important codes, however, are unspoken, and when these laws are violated, men are obliged to abide by the code even if it means doing the unthinkable. Hobson Abernathy, Big Hob, loves his family and leads his household with firmness and uncompromising example. His wife, Lavinia, was married at sixteen and still fulfills her duties with skill and selfless devotion. She obeys her husband (one of the rules), but she's a strong woman and when the occasion demands, she offers her wisdom to bring balance back to the family. Teenie, their teenage daughter spends her time bossin' her brother, Little Hob. Little Hob says he doesn't mind 'cause the same is true for chickens. One ol' rooster is always the boss and he can peck any chicken he wants to. When Teenie isn't bossin', she's dreaming about the young man she's sparkin', Woody. And, Woody? Well, he's anxious to marry Teenie and brags a lot to prove his eligibility. “Not bad loud-mouth bragging, just tongue-strutting,” as Hobson calls it. Little Hob is about growed up; still a boy in many ways, he is proud of his advancing maturity and is not shirking the arrival of a man's responsibilities. Hobson teaches his son everything he needs to know, and if there's a man Little Hob idolizes, it would be his papa, Big Hob.
London Wingo, an ordained minister and a fourth-year student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is struggling to reconcile his desires for further education with his financial worries that accompany many young couples awaiting the birth of their first child. When he applies for a church in Linden, Missouri, and, accepted by the deacons there, he feels that he has found security for his family. He does not realize that in return for this security the people of Linden expect him to defer to their practices and ideas and will use church law as well as social pressure to ensure conformity. The struggles of London and his wife Kathie to keep both their church and their spiritual integrity, rise to a powerful climax when Kathie becomes seriously ill. London realizes he must choose between Linden and the people who contributed to their unhappiness and a rich metropolitan parish where he might escape to a contented and more profitable life. James Street went to a Baptist seminary and had his own church for a few years before devoting himself to writing full-time. It is from his experiences as a young pastor that he can speak so well about the challenges facing London and Kathie Wingo ― discord, feuds, rigid mores, lack of privacy, balancing selfless service and a personal life, as well as the maturity and deepening that evolves as one hurls through life's obstacles
James Street was born and raised in the South and was one of its most passionate and eloquent voices. Through this collection of articles from Holiday and the Saturday Evening Post the people and the cities of the South come to life ― legends are explored, contradictions examined, historical milestones noted, personal anecdotes retold, and quips and quotes of a 1950's generation recorded. Flowing through his stories are the great rivers of the South, which although sometimes merry and sometimes gloomy, wind and roll and tumble through the collection like liquid poetry. To James Street the South was heaven and :contained everything good and big and wonderful in life" ― the things that made people human. The South was a love he cherished to himself and championed to the nations. For him, it was "the measure of life, the temper of men, and the crucible of artistic sensibility."
Baptist preacher, London Wingo, first introduced in The Gauntlet, returns to Linden, Missouri after a twenty year absence to face what is to be the greatest crisis in his ministerial and parental career. London and his wife, Kathie, had built a church in Linden, Missouri where they faced the trials and triumphs of a first ministry. When Kathie died, however, London accepted a position in Kansas City, and departed abruptly with his his baby daughter. London left Linden as a young widower ― stunned, helpless and alone ― but returns as man in his prime ― successful, passionate about his calling, and the loving father of a beloved, spirited daughter ― ready to leave the big leagues for the minors and address the sorrows he left behind. London looks forward to the challenge of organizing a new church and to writing a biography of Roger Williams, a project he has been planning for years. But, most of all, he believes in the mystic properties of farms and small towns and hopes that his daughter, a free soul who doesn't quite fit anywhere, will discover a way to find herself. London succeeds at first in quieting the dissident elements in his ministry by placing the critics in important positions in the church hierarchy. But Paige becomes interested in Vance Andrews who is engaged to the daughter of one of London's most powerful enemies and London fears trouble is ahead. As London faces this crisis, his faith is bulwarked by a woman who encourages and helps him with his parish problems ― Forrest Roberts, a woman of understanding and keen awareness; a woman who sparks the promise of new love. The High Calling is a warm, moving novel which, through its insights into the career of a Baptist preacher, succeeds in many ways to do for the Protestant minister what The Cardinal did for the Catholic priest. Yet perhaps this exciting, dramatic sequel to The Gauntlet is most distinguished for its portrayal of London Wingo, who comes through as a very human, sympathetic character, more mature and wiser than in his younger days.
James Street has a gift for sifting the ashes of history, adding a portion of romance and adventure, a pinch of this and that, and compounding his own formula for historical novels. This is his best and he uses the battle for Vicksburg, the saga of the Confederate ironclad Arkansas and the Union ram Queen of the West for a story as big as the Mississippi. The epic of the Arkansas, built in the wilderness by men who hauled her iron and guns hundreds of miles by ox wagons, is one of the most amazing and little-known dramas of history. She struck terror from Illinois to New Orleans and became a ship that men whispered about; a ghost ship whose guns kept blazing although there were no men aboard her. Mr. Street gives us a galaxy of characters in this book. Most of the action revolves around three Confederate sailors; Wyeth Woodward, gunner's mate, who hates war; Simeon St. Leger Granville, a British soldier of fortune whose lust for battle is exceeded only by his lust for drink, and Vespasian Gillivray, the lovable Cajan, a descendant of the Creeks of Mr. Street's Oh, Promised Land. The fourth member of a quartet you never will forget is Dolly — fat, cold, deadly. She is a nine-inch Dahlgren gun on whose breech is engraved By Valour and Arms. There also is Gar Rivers, an inspiring Negro, an artist of sorts who fought for a slave-owning people. In these pages you will meet Laurel MacKenzie, betrothed to Wyeth, and Morna (Dabney) Alexander, who wants the young sailor just to prove to herself that marriage has not dulled her charms. Tap Roots' readers will remember her and her melancholiac husband, Keith Alexander, a Southerner who fights for the Union. Keith is here, too, contemptuous as ever of his own life and the lives of others. Then there is Sharon Weatherford, a rooming-house keeper in Natchez-Under-the-Hill. Her love for Simeon St. Leger Granville apparently is a hopeless thing, and yet she, a social and racial outcast, meets every challenge, and triumphs. The story begins with the building of the Arkansas and ends with the fall of Vicksburg, which was to the South what Hastings was to England during the Norman conquest. The Union was saved in the West, but that theater has been neglected. Few Americans realize that the Battle of Franklin was bloodier than Gettysburg, that the Arkansas created more havoc than the Merrimac, and that Vicksburg held out for more than a year. As in Tap Roots, Mr. Street warns his readers again that they will not find the Civil War of Lee and Jackson in this book. This is history as it happened, not the dry meager words of textbooks or the dulcet tones of the julep school. Scoundrels and mountebanks work and cheat in the red glare of Vicksburg's guns. But man is at his best while making war and even when human life is not as dear as rotten mule meat, there are those who prove again that there always will be honor, decency, and dignity for those willing to fight for them.
Bourbons. Custard Creams. Rich Tea. Jammie Dodgers. Chocolate Digestives. Shortbread. Ginger snaps. Which is your favourite? British people eat more biscuits than any other nation; they are as embedded in our culture as fish and chips or the Sunday roast. We follow the humble biscuit's transformation from durable staple for sailors, explorers and colonists to sweet luxury for the middling classes to comfort food for an entire nation. Like an assorted tin of biscuits, this charming and beautifully illustrated book has something to offer for everyone, combining recipes for hardtack and macaroons, Shrewsbury biscuits and Garibaldis, with entertaining and eye-opening vignettes of social history.
It is the story of a lifetime spent on the sea in the most dazzling years in all the history of navigation and discovery. It is the story of dark days spent under the shadow of the Spanish Inquisition; of bright hours of roistering and shining moments of love. But Lepe's story cannot be told without telling of another man -- a brave, arrogant, and determined visionary. That man is Christopher Columbus. The time is late in the fifteenth century, when the scimitar of Islam was across North Africa and the Moors still held Granada. Constantinople had fallen to the Turks, and Cathay, with its spices, its gold, and its aloes, lay like a locked treasure chest behind the embattled minarets of the East. Denied these riches, Europe waited for bread while the Holy-Orders fought for men's souls. The long bleak night was upon Europe, and a few men -- only a few -- turned their backs on the East and looked westward toward the Ocean Sea and the Unknown. Come with Lepe and his friends -- the hunchback called The Rabbit and Areos, the brawny muleteer -- to the seaports of the Mediterranean as they sail with the sagacious Pinzon. Follow them to Palos as they stand on the decks of a little vessel, the Pinta, that August morning and set sail on the great adventure. And watch while mutiny roars through the three tiny ships and the stubborn Columbus sails on, undaunted. And thrill with them when first Lepe sights the cliffs of San Salvador . . . only to be denied, by the temperamental Columbus, the coveted prize promised to the first man to see the New World . . . the Velvet Doublet. But their story doesn't end here. There is excitement and intrigue, rich good fortune and bitter tragedy, whirlwind passion and uncanny tricks of fate in store for you as you read Lepe's exciting account of the years when Columbus built an ocean bridge to the New World.
In this fifth and final novel of the Dabney family saga, the reader is introduced to the last of the gallant Dabney clan. Passionate and restless, Mingo Dabney falls in love with Rafaela Galban, a beautiful Cuban girl who was to her people what Joan of Arc had been to the French. But as Mingo rode his white horse from Lebanon on a frosty night in 1895 to follow Rafaela to Cuba, it was the woman herself he sought to win. Little did he dream that he would never see his home again, or that his quest for Rafaela was about to plummet him into the midst of flaming revolt on Spain's fortress-island in the Caribbean. As the lines of Mingo Dabney's destiny crossed Rafaela's, they also ran counter to colorful and unforgettable figures from Cuban history ― General Máximo Gómez, the "Old Fox", who armed a handful of peasants with machetes, and the incredible Antonio Macéo, whose mixed blood shaped him into a strange and formidable leader, a half consecrated fighter for liberty, a half debauchee and rake. In the pages of this robust and swaggering tale, you will walk arm in arm with Mingo Dabney and Antonio Macéo as they recruit their army of insurrectos under the eyes of the Havana police. You will follow the rebels through the vermin-infested jungle as they fight their running battles with Sagaldo's army of a quarter of a million men. You will thrill to the beat of native drums sounding the battle cry of the revolutionists ― "Venga Mambi! Come on you dirt, and die!" You will see drunken and disorderly scavengers, discarded men without shoes or guns or horses, transformed into heroes, ready to follow El Dabney ― the El Dabney of a hundred miracles, the tree cutter, the fire maker, the healer ― and ready to die for Cuba. You will live on an island aflame, and as Mingo Dabney moves to a thunderous climax in 1896, you will know that you have watched history being made.
